The expression to go chalk has to do with rankings in an athletic tournament and harks back to when seeded teams or players were listed on a chalkboard. To pick chalk means to choose one’s favorite competitor, and you can also speak of a chalk...
Imagine telling someone how to get to your home, but without using the name of your street, or any other street within ten miles. Could you do it? We take street names for granted, but these words are useful for far more, like applying for a job or...
Jennifer, an elementary-school teacher in Tallahassee, Florida, loves saying the term chockablock, meaning “closely packed together,” and wonders about its etymology. Chock can refer to a kind of wedge used to hold something in place...
Peter from Camden, New Jersey, wonders about the phrases not by a long chalk and not by a long shot. The former is used in the United Kingdom, while the latter is commonly used in the United States. Both suggest the idea of missing a mark by a...
More than a century ago, the Springfield Republican newspaper in Massachusetts proposed a new word for that twitterpated time in an adolescent’s life when one discovers the joys of flirtation: being all girled up. The Republican is also the...
chalk n.— «Chalk: Years ago—before computers, if you can imagine—bets were recorded on a large chalkboard. The favorites would get the most checks and thus the most chalk, making picking the chalk the term for picking the favorite. This...