The Hawaiian word aloha is both a greeting and a goodbye, as well as a profound acknowledgement of the oneness with all living things. Plus, what’s a lemur ball? A new book will leave you marveling over the mysteries of lemurs, wombats, and other...
The English language has a variety of expressions referring to the excretion of moisture from the skin due to heat. There’s the verb perspire and the Yiddish borrowing schvitz. If you perspire profusely, you may sweat buckets, or be sweating like a...
Dale from Huntsville, Alabama, recalls a colleague in Québec dissing imitation maple syrup as lamppost syrup. Indeed, the phrase sirop de poteau, or “pole syrup,” is a disdainful reference used by French-speaking Canadians referring to the weak...
In Spanish, someone who’s conceited may be described as considering themselves la ultima Coca-Cola del desierto or “the last Coca-Cola in the desert.” Similar Spanish phrases are rendered in English as “the last beer in the stadium” or “the last...
Need a slang term that can replace just about any noun? Try chumpie. If you’re from Philadelphia, you may already know this handy placeholder word. And there’s Queens, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Manhattan, and … The Bronx — why do we add...
Chrissie in Arlington, Virginia, has fond memories of her family playing bridge together. Whenever a trick with four cards that included an ace, a two card, a three card, and a four card was played, her grandmother would chuckle and say, Ace, two...