The phrase This ain’t my first rodeo, meaning “This isn’t my first time” or “I already have experience with this” goes back at least as far as the 1981 Joan Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest, where Faye Dunaway as...
One participant in our online discussion about overshadowing quoted National Geographicphotographer Joel Sartore on the topic. “Sometimes,” Sartore has observed, “you just have to pet the whale.” In other words, don’t...
During our online discussion about how being focused on one’s phone or camera can distract from fully participating in an experience, a listener brought up the term chimping. As we’ve noted before, chimping refers to fiddling with the...
What’s a word for the act of being so focused on documenting an important event, such as a wedding or an eclipse, that your effort to capture it distracts from experiencing the event itself? The A Way with Words Facebook group has some...
Liz Cooksey of Portland, Oregon, fondly remembers two bookstores with clever names: The Novel Experience of San Luis Obispo, California, and the Title Wave, which sold discounted materials retired from the Multnomah County Library. This is part of a...
Football, like most sports, brings its own set of idioms and jargon that ride the line between cleverness and cliche. The adjective multiple describes a player, an offense or defense, or even a whole team that has multiple threats or talents. And a...