Have you heard of carspreading? It’s like manspreading but for vehicles, cars that take up more and more space and refuse to yield. The term is gaining traction in urban planning circles, particularly in Europe, where studies show new cars are...
Wendy from Falls Church, Virginia, asks about a gesture corresponding to the exclamation Shame, shame! that involves scraping one index finger over the other, almost as if peeling a carrot. A German name for a similar gesture actually translates as...
Yasha, who grew up speaking Russian, recalls phrase used to comfort a child after a small mishap like a skinned knee. The phrase translates as “It will heal in time for the wedding,” and Yasha had assumed it was solely Slavic. So he was surprised to...
Sending someone a care package shows you care, of course. But the first care packages were boxes of food and personal items for survivors of World War II. They were from the Committee for American Remittances to Europe, the acronym for which is CARE...
A CARE package was first a postwar relief parcel, not just a box of snacks for a homesick student. In 1946, CARE meant Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, a coalition of civic, social, religious, and labor groups that sent food and...
There’s a word for those noble souls who’re picking up litter while they jog. They’re ploggers. The neologisms plogger and plogging are a combination of the English word jogging and Swedish plocka upp, which means pick up. This is part of a complete...