When Julius Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon River and march against his rival in Rome, he supposedly said Alea jacta est, or “The die is cast,” indicating that at that point, there was no going back. The phrase is a reference to rolling a die, but...
Where does the term one-off come from? Among British foundry workers in the 1950s, the number of units produced from a given mold was designated with the word off. So if twenty widgets came off the line, you’d call that batch a twenty-off. A one...

