Manuel in Fort Worth, Texas, wonders about a phrase he’s heard from his dad and uncles: Cut me a husk, meaning “Give me a break.” The term apparently evolved from slang used by U.S. Marines serving in Vietnam, and HUS, a designation for certain...
A Marine Corps veteran in Omaha, Nebraska, is puzzled by a phrase he often heard during his service in Vietnam: give me a huss, meaning “give me a hand” or “help me.” One strong theory for its origin involves a type of helicopter known as the Huss...
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...
“Helicopter parents” are so named because of their tendency to hover over their children’s lives. A Kentucky listener who made an initial college visit with her son reports two variations that she learned from staffers:...
flying truck n.— «He now finds it a little bizarre to be piloting an old MI-17 Russian helicopter, a legacy of the Soviet invaders here, in the Hindu Kush of Afghanistan.…The United States is training American pilots to fly the...
bulldogging n.— «Considering the sheep are ovine, not canine, it is ironic that the term for this type of capture is “bulldogging.”…Cornelius said the key to bulldogging was to get as close as possible one or two metres...