Choosing language that helps resolve interpersonal conflict. Sometimes a question is really just a veiled form of criticism and understanding the difference between “ask culture” and “guess culture” can help you know how to respond. • What words...
A month of Sundays, meaning “a long period,” or “longer than I can actually figure out,” goes at least as far back as the 1759 book The Life and Real Adventures of Hamilton Murray. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Origin of “A...
Steve from San Diego asks whether workplace support documents should describe repeated problems as recurrences or reoccurrences. Recurrence is the safer, far more common choice in corpora and in many dictionaries, although reoccurrence and reoccur...
Downton Abbey, a program featured on Masterpiece Theater, provided a handful of colorful expressions that date surprisingly far back. “Like it or lump it,” meaning “deal with it,” is found at least as early as 1830 and takes from the old verb lump...
Why are some American place names pronounced differently than the famous place they were named after? Why is Cairo, Ill., pronounced “KAY-roh”? Why do Midwesterners pronounce Versailles as “Ver-SALES” and the New Madrid Fault as “New MAD-rid”? Grant...
What’s for dinner? How about wind pudding, air sauce, and a side of balloon trimmings? This colorful euphemism for “nothing” dates as far back as the American Civil War, when troops would come into the mess tent, see a wild squirrel boiling in a...