We hear the word maverick a lot lately, but where did this term for a stubborn nonconformist come from? Martha tells the story of the Texas politician who inspired the word, and whose grandson apparently coined another familiar English word...
retail jail n.— «In a recent story about Home Office plans to ease the burden on police by creating so-called “retail jails” in shopping centres, the phrase “custody suites” was used. I’ve heard of bridal suites, a...
custody suite n.— «In a recent story about Home Office plans to ease the burden on police by creating so-called “retail jails” in shopping centres, the phrase “custody suites” was used. I’ve heard of bridal suites...
God’s wink n.— «Hey there’s a cute guy in my MAS class. He’s got the rugged hair under the baseball cap thing happening. Today I was just hiding under my GK hat, hoping he didn’t notice me smiling…why? Coz today he was sporting a...
dirka-dirka interj.— «We have in the movie all the terrorists talk basically in this Arabic gibberish which they just go, you know, “Dirka-dirka, Muhammad, Muhammad Ali,” and they talk like—”Muhammad jihad,” and...
mojibake n.— «Mojibake is a word to describe unintelligible gibberish displayed on a screen or printed on a paper when a software fails to handle encodings or fonts in the data stream. Mojibake is spelled in Japanese as...