Katherine from Allentown, Pennsylvania, remembers her grandmother teaching her to say Lucky lucky white horse, ding ding ding! whenever a white horse pulling a delivery wagon passed her house. After each ding, they were supposed to lick their left...
If you mistype something, that’s a typo. But what do you call it when your voice-to-text program mistypes as you’re dictating? Is that a mico, as in microphone? Plus, the word sycophant has a long and surprising history that goes all the way back to...
Next time you stub your toe, try letting loose with a Bandoozer! Sarah from Elk Rapids, Michigan, says her grandparents invented a fake swear word bandoozer to give kids the thrill of naughtiness without any real harm. Bandoozer doesn’t appear...
Wendy from Falls Church, Virginia, asks about a gesture corresponding to the exclamation Shame, shame! that involves scraping one index finger over the other, almost as if peeling a carrot. A German name for a similar gesture actually translates as...
If you work in tech support, you might use snarky slang for problems caused by computer users themselves. There’s the acronym PEBCAK, for example, which stands for Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard. And: a lush poem about the sea inspired by...
We tend to take the index of a book for granted, but centuries ago, these helpful lists were viewed with suspicion. Some even worried that indexes would harm reading comprehension! A witty new book tells the story. Plus, the Latin term bona fides...
