To transmit information during wartime, various industries used to encode their messages letter by letter with an elaborate system–a primitive version of today’s digital encryption. Grant breaks down some of those secret codes, and shares the story...
If you’re single but tagging along on someone else’s date, you might be described as a “fifth wheel,” a term that goes back to Thomas Jefferson’s day. Not until much later, after the bicycle had been invented, the term “third wheel” started becoming...
The Spanish version of being a “fifth wheel” on a date is “toca el violin,” which translates to being the one who plays the violin, as in, they provide the background music. In German, there’s a version that translates to, “useless as a goiter.”...