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 —...
A pickle inspired this week’s puzzle from Quiz Guy John Chaneski. He was thinking about the fact that if you need something to help you strum a guitar, a “pickle do just fine,” the word pickle sounding, of course, like an...
A violin maker wonders about the origin of a practice in his trade known as purfling, where a black and white line is inlaid into a tiny channel along the edge of the instrument. Martha traces the word back to the Latin filum, meaning...
there guitar n.— «Tonight one of Conan’s guests was perennial air guitar contest runner-up, Bjorn Turock (sp?). In the course of the interview, Bjorn bristled at Conan’s inquiry as to what air guitarists call “real” guitars...
eef v.— «Deke Dickerson, called a “rock mainstay” in an April 2003 article in Guitar Player Magazine, is an old “eefer” himself. He explains that eefin is a “sort of wheezing-in-rhythm thing that was popular amongst hillbillies. It goes...
oil spotted v.— «Steve McDonald (our Guitar Tech) got oil spotted. Oil spotting is when you leave someone. Steve ran in to use the phone and didn’t tell anyone so when the bus driver got there we had all been waiting for a while and just...