Crossword puzzles are a marvelous mental workout. A delightful new book about them shares plenty of crossword lore and puzzle-solving tips. Also, performers who tell each other break a leg aren’t really hoping someone gets hurt. The phrase stems...
Following our conversation about fossicking for gemstones, a listener in Melbourne, Australia, points out that where he’s from, emu is slang for a person who picks up discarded tickets at a racetrack, hoping to find an accidentally discarded winner...
During the late 19th and early 20th century, thousands of volunteers helped crowdsource the Oxford English Dictionary. This venerable reference work includes citations sent in by inventors, eccentrics, scientists and educators, an Arctic explorer —...
If you’re fossicking specifically for opals in Australia, you’re said to be noodling. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Noodling for Opals” Grant, earlier we were talking about the term fossick, meaning to hunt for gemstones. And I...
To fossick meaning “to rummage about,” derives from the use of fossicking for the practice of literally digging about for gemstones in abandoned mining excavations, a hobby that’s particularly popular in Australia and New Zealand. There, such...