An Army veteran in Madison, Alabama, wonders about the use of the charrette (sometimes spelled with one R, charette) in the military to mean a gathering to workshop ideas and work through all potential solutions to a problem. The term seems to have...
Carriage, cart, wagon, buggy — how do you refer to that giant basket on wheels you push around the grocery store? As the Harvard Dialect Survey shows, the answer depends on what part of the United States you’re from. See the big Facebook...
Angela, from Dallas, grew up in northwest Louisiana and calls the wheeled basket at the grocery store a buggy. Her husband, Eric, prefers shopping cart. Dialect surveys show buggy is particularly widespread in the South, including East Texas...
Here’s a handy word: fomite. It means “an inanimate object that can transmit an infectious agent” like a doorknob handle or a comb infested with head lice. It also has a picturesque Latin origin. Martha explains, and shares a...
voodoo rig n.— «The large dinosaurs glide along, attached to low-slung go-carts run by jockey-size drivers. A second operator in a control booth uses a “voodoo rig”—a device that fits along the operator’s arm—to move a dinosaur’s body...
