Andy from Kensington, Maryland, wonders about the word sycophant. Among the ancient Greeks, a blackmailer or someone who maliciously prosecuted others was a sykophantēs, a word that comes from the Greek sykon, meaning “fig,” and phainein, “to show.”...
Susan from Eugene, Oregon, remembers school physical education in 1960s California, where teams wore pinnies: colored canvas, apron-like garments, two squares with straps, pulled over the head and tied at the sides. The gym-class term is a clipped...
Jackie in Massachusetts shares her mishearing the name of the beloved character Mr. Green Jeans on the old Captain Kangaroo TV show. She was in college before she realized his name wasn’t Mr. Cream Cheese. This is part of a complete episode...
On Twitter, columnist Shannon Proudfoot asks: What’s the most mundane but thunderous epiphany you ever had? Something so ridiculously dull or elementary that still bowled you over when you figured it out? Some of the answers had to do with...
Is there a word for that mind-blowing moment when you think you’ve heard it all, but then something happens that’s completely out of your realm of experience? You might call this phenomenon a marmalade dropper. Others might call it a...
