A listener in Carmel, New York, remembers his father’s phrase knuckle down, screw bony tight, a challenge called out to someone particularly adept at playing marbles. The game of marbles, once wildly popular in the United States, is a rich...
A New York City man who grew up speaking both English and Tagalog reports an experience common to bilinguals: his behavior and emotions tend to shift when he’s speaking one language as opposed to the other. Two good books on the topic: Life...
The phrase “You’re not the boss of me” may have been popularized by the They Might Be Giants song that serves as the theme for TV’s “Malcolm in the Middle.” But this turn of phrase goes back to at least 1883. This...
Mary in Dallas, Texas, grew up in Canada and wonders why her British mother affectionately calls Mary’s nine-year-old son booby, a pet name passed down in the family from England. In Britain, booby has long been a children’s term for a crybaby...
Card games often go by several different names, like Canfield and Nertz, or Egyptian Racehorse and Egyptian Rat Screw, or B.S. and Bible Study. These names, and the rules for each, vary because they’re more often passed from person to person...
Nerd used to be a term of derision, connoting someone who was socially awkward and obsessed with a narrow field of interest. Now it’s used more admiringly for anyone who has a passion for a particular topic. Linguists call that type of...