“Hairy panic” is a weed that’s wreaking havoc in a small Australian town. The panic in its name has nothing to do with extreme anxiety or overpowering fear. Hairy panic, also known as panic grass, in the scientific genus Panicum...
What’s so special about the phrase Sit on a pan, Otis? It’s an example of a palindrome — a word or phrase that’s spelled the same backwards as it is forwards. This year’s contest known as the Oscars of the palindrome...
A Hollywood entrance, in spelunker slang, is when a cave has a large, epic opening. Burkard Bilger’s epic article in The New Yorker on the world of squeeze freaks and other extreme cavers contains lots of great caving slang. This is part of a...
ice-jacking n.— «Several factors converged to cause the tower failure. The structure of the tower is such that two parts are spliced together. Water had seeped into the tower which had turned to ice with the recent extreme cold...
Word nerd Ammon Shea quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City to spend an entire year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The result, in addition to eyestrain, headaches, and skeptics’ puzzlement, was Shea’s new book...
Taliban union n.— «The speculation follows much earlier talk that the “Taliban Unions” (as the extreme left unions are affectionately known by more moderate industrial organisations) would be looking to behead Boydy at the earliest...