That little button on top of a baseball cap? Some people call it a squatchee or a squatcho, the latter popularized by comedian Rich Hall’s book Sniglets (Amazon), which features apt but made-up words that aren’t in any dictionary. This is part of a...
Michael in San Diego, California, plays a game with his three-year-daughter that involves spotting small round property markers in the sidewalk, which he calls bozo buttons. His mother played the same game as a youngster, but calls those metal discs...
“Bott’s dots” are little round pavement markers, named for California highway engineer Elbert D. Botts. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bott’s Dots” Grant, do you know what bots, dots are? They’re also called turtles in Washington...
Those little musical interludes on radio programs, particularly public radio shows, go by lots of names, including stinger, button, bumper, and bridge. By the way, the fellow who chooses and inserts them in our show is our engineer and technical...
Paula from Palm City, Florida, wants to know: What’s so cute about buttons, anyway? Like the expressions cute as a bug and cute as a bug’s ear, this one seems to derive from cute meaning delicate and small. She raises another interesting question:...
The owner of a yarn store in Juneau says a customer corrected her when she pointed out a special collection of buttons and said, “You should check out these ones.” Is it incorrect to say these ones instead of just these? This is part of a complete...
