What the fox says may be a mystery, but we do know that dogs bark differently around the world. In China, for example, they say not bow-wow but wang wang. Also, the story behind the British tradition of scrumping. It’s not a middle school...
To mash the brake or mash the elevator button comes from a Southern instance of mash meaning “to press something hard.” This is part of a complete episode.
Martha and Grant discuss why some puns work and others don’t. Martha recommends John Pollack’s observation in The Pun Also Rises describing how “for a split second, puns manage to hold open the elevator doors of language and...
blind hoistway n.— «He concluded that he must be on the thirteenth floor, and that, this being an express elevator, there was no egress from the shaft anywhere for many stories up or down. (Such a shaft is known as a blind hoistway...
le sigh n.— «Some of my stuff is in the hall, some is still in the hotel room. I have to go get a new key from the front desk. Precursor of things to come: the elevator took forever to get there. Then, they wanted ID, which of course was...
kicker n.— «Elapor is a rather odd material, it has an almost “soapy” feel to it and, as a result, can only be successfully assembled using cyano and activator (often known as “kicker”). So, armed with plenty of...