The English language has a variety of expressions referring to the excretion of moisture from the skin due to heat. There’s the verb perspire and the Yiddish borrowing schvitz. If you perspire profusely, you may sweat buckets, or be sweating like a...
We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing...
The French expression peigner la girafe means to do a useless, tedious, or annoying job, but literally translates as “to comb the giraffe.” That’s one of the many gems in Mark Abley’s new book Watch Your Tongue: What Our...
grub up v. phr.— «Under a scheme to start in August 2008, if EU agriculture ministers agree, subsidies to uproot vineyards—or “grub up,” in EU parlance—would fall gradually each year in a carrot-and-stick approach to promote...
carrot-cruncher n.— «Carrot-munchers 1; global confectionery giant 0. For millions of people around the world, Sunday’s climbdown by the makers of Mars Bars was a particularly sweet success. I use the term “carrot-munchers”...
