A Wellesley College student has been reading about the Victorian fear of being buried alive—also known as taphophobia—and the bizarre 19th-century burial practices associated with it. She’s heard that they gave rise to such expressions as dead...
A man who works nights in a mortuary in Brookings, Oregon is curious about the origin of—what else?—graveyard shift. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Etymology of Graveyard Shift” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi...
AFPAK n.— Note: A blend of AFghanistan and PAKistan. «In the two-front war that Washington is now calling “AFPAK,” there’s more head-scratching going on than is immediately visible. Yes, President Barack Obama last week...
graveyard month n.— «February and March are known in the retail industry as the “graveyard months,” the time when wealthy owners find themselves some sunshine on an expensive cruise liner waiting for the spring recovery...
An Illinois man recalls that as a kid, he used to mix fountain drinks of every flavor into a concoction he and his friends called a suicide. He wonders if anyone else calls them that. Why a suicide? Because it looks and tastes like poison? This is...
near-hire n.— «After insistent lobbying from call center agencies, Gloria Arroyo also approved the allocation of P500 million ($10,907,504) for the “re-education” of “near-hires”—a term used to describe the 92 percent of applicants who...