There are lots of creative names for the @, also known in English as the at-sign. In Denmark and Sweden, it’s sometimes called the snabel-a, or “elephant trunk.” In Italian, it’s a chiocciola, or “snail. In Greek...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
That sputtering noise when someone sticks out their tongue, puts their lips together, and blows is called a raspberry. No one knows the origin of this slang term, although it may have to do with that pileup of consonants colliding in the middle of...
Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronicling their extraordinary careers becomes a larger meditation on perfectionism and creativity itself. Plus...
Pam in Buford, South Carolina, grew up playing Duck Duck Goose, but her Minnesota-born husband knew this children’s game as Duck Duck Gray Duck. The game her husband played is described in an early edition of Education in the Kindergarten...
If you need a way to urge someone to butt out of your business or stop telling you how to do something, you can always retort, I’m the one milking this duck! This is part of a complete episode.