A listener in Washington, D.C., says that his parents taught him that when guests were over for dinner and a family member had specks of food on his face, the polite way to surreptitiously nudge him into wiping it off was to say, “Look...
Pickle, baboon, cupcake, snorkel, pumpkin, Kalamazoo—let’s face it, some words are just plain funny. But what makes some words funnier than others? Martha and Grant consider this question with an assist from Neil Simon’s play (and movie)...
“He’s sharp as the corner of a round table.” “She’s so sad she’s pulling a face as long as a fiddle.” If startling similes leaving you “grinning like a basket full of possum heads,” you’ll...
pregame v.— «Ms. Mayer was meeting with Mr. Kraus and Mr. Pichai to help them prepare for a meeting the next day with Mr. Schmidt, Mr. Brin and Mr. Page to discuss how the company could leverage information-sharing among Google’s many...
I kill you later n.— «Using derivatives contracts known as accumulators, the company wanted to minimize its currency exposure resulting from a A$1.6 billion (US$1.07 billion) investment in an iron ore mine in Australia. Three months...
double cropping n.— «Sardi said the Edcon deal, which was concluded last year when Bain bought the retailer for R25bn, remained SA’s biggest private equity transaction. But, said Sardi, the debt on the Edcon deal was trading at a...