Shaun Usher has collected many marvelous epistles in Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (Bookshop|Amazon). One of them, from E. B. White, is a thoughtful letter of encouragement urging the reader to “wind the clock, for...
As a noun, respair means “the return of hope after a period of despair.” As a verb, respair means “to have hope again.” Although both forms are rare and obsolete, they seem ripe for reviving. Respair is among dozens of uplifting terms collected in...
A listener in Hope, North Wales, points out that there’s punny way to spell a hungry horse in four letters. (Hint: one particularly British synonym for horse is gee-gee.) This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Hungry Horse Pun” I’ve been...
Do you ever spend your off-time doing something work related? This is known as a busman’s holiday or a postman’s holiday, as in the British understanding of holiday as a vacation or time off work. Research for a dictionary entry on postman’s holiday...
Did you ever use a tilly ticket in the bathroom?
subprime scrooge n.— «The banks listed in the report, or what the senators call “Subprime Scrooges,” have received billions in taxpayer monies, yet continue to file foreclosure proceedings rather than use programs like the federally funded Hope for...