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...
Those annoying add-on fees that come at the end of an online transaction are part of a lucrative practice known as drip pricing. The word drip has become a descriptor for anything that slowly increases revenue. For example, drip marketing involves...
Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...
Liam in San Francisco, California, emailed to share a passage from Donna Tartt’s novel, The Secret History (Bookshop|Amazon). It’s a sensuous description of the sights, sounds, and smells of autumn in Vermont. This is part of a complete...
How do actors bring Shakespeare’s lines to life so that modern audiences immediately understand the text? One way is to emphasize the names of people and places at certain points. That technique is called billboarding. And: Anyone for an...
We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing...