Ian in Clyde, North Carolina, is puzzled when a colleague uses the term blue million, meaning “a large amount.” Along with words like zillion and gazillion, this expression functions as an indefinite hyperbolic numeral. Sometimes the...
You can say something looks like hell, meaning that it doesn’t look so good, or you can be even more emphatic and say something looks like hell with everyone out to lunch. This is part of a complete episode.
A Huntsville, Alabama, man finds that his younger co-workers have never heard the phrase going to hell in a handbasket. Although the expression is at least as old as the U.S. Civil War, its etymology remains unclear. In the early 1960s, the humorist...
“Raise hell and put a chunk under it” is simply an intensified version of the phrase “raise hell,” meaning “to cause trouble” or “create a noisy disturbance.” This is part of a complete episode.
The emphatic exclamation “from hell to breakfast” goes back to the Civil War. This is part of a complete episode.
Another overly optimistic query to the book agent at SlushPile Hell reads in part: “My dog has written a book on how to be a success.” This is part of a complete episode.