It’ll never be seen on a galloping horse is a handy answer to tiny flaws in sewing or quilting: from a moving horse, nobody will notice the mismatched plaid or crooked stitch. Debbie in San Diego grew up hearing her seamstress mother’s family...
Nancy in Danville, California, wonders why a dried grape becomes a raisin and a dried plum becomes a prune. English borrowed raisin and prune from French, where raisin means grape and prune means plum, through different routes and at different times...
Beware of false friends, those words that don’t translate the way you’d expect. For example, the word “gift” in German means “poison,” and the Spanish word “tuna” means “the fruit of the prickly pear cactus.” These tricky lookalikes are also called...
Why do subdivisions and office complexes have names invoking landscapes and animals that don’t exist there? A Fort Wayne, Indiana, listener got to wondering about this after passing the “Bay View Apartments” in her hometown: there’s not a bay in...
“Don’t be frontin’!” Naomi, a college student in Denton, Texas, asks about fronting, slang for putting on a false front, bluffing, or pretending to be something you’re not. The verb traces back to 1800s pickpocket slang, where a “front” distracted...
Some children don’t talk until they’re age three or older, then go on to do just fine. Why do some kids start speaking relatively late in life? The hosts talk about a recent Ask MetaFilter thread on that topic. This is part of a complete episode...