What’s a word for the act of being so focused on documenting an important event, such as a wedding or an eclipse, that your effort to capture it distracts from experiencing the event itself? The A Way with Words Facebook group has some...
The creepy, dystopian, and weirdly wonderful TV series Severance offers a teachable moment in the form of a false etymology in a flaky self-help book by one of the characters. The book suggests that the word camaraderie derives from the type of a...
spike the lens v. phr.— «In the final moments of the Munchkin Land scene, in which Glinda the good witch (played by Billie Burke) instructs Dorothy to follow the yellow brick road, it’s easy to spot young Priscilla, near Burke, as the...
bull rope n.— «He said for years that he was at the funeral and that he photographed the boy. “I had a telephoto lens on my camera, and we were across the street behind what we called the ‘bull rope,’ that we had to stay there,” he said...
noddy n.— «After the interview is finished, the camera is then turned onto the interviewer who asks some of the questions again and gives a series of “noddies,” that is, reaction shots, nods, smiles, or expressions of...
servery n.— «Wired: Any simple ideas for charging devices? Stewart: I have something called the servery. It’s a room with two long white marble counters on either side and lots of plugs. That’s where everything is—I have my cameras, a lot...