Juice in Genoa, New York, remembers her mother used to say I am so mad I could spit nickels. It’s one of several variations on the idea of being angry enough to spit, period, or to spit something specific, such as spit tacks, spit nails, spit...
Dana in Reno, Nevada, wants a word for that moment when you’re playing cards or a board game and you draw what would have been the perfect card or tile for the previous turn you played. She suggests post-perfect pickup. Might there be others...
Hundreds of years ago, the word girl didn’t necessarily mean a female child — in the 14th and 15th centuries, it could refer to a child of either sex. Only later did its meaning become more specific. • Some people think that referring to a...
Charlie Pierce of Devon, England, describes the UK tradition of wetting the baby’s head, a pub outing for a new or expectant father before the baby arrives. Friends buy the rounds, and the father-to-be is not supposed to pay for any of them. The...
A wise Spanish proverb, cada cabeza es un mundo, translates as “every head is a world,” meaning we each have our own perspective. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Every Head is a World” I was reading a book...
If you’re serious about writing a memoir, what topics should you include, and what can you leave out? And how honest can you really be about the other people in your life? Some of America’s leading memoirists wrote things they lived to...