Jeanne from Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin, is perplexed by the phrase at first blush, which would seem to have to do with embarrassment. But at least as early as the mid-14th century, another meaning of blush has been “glance,” so at first...
Paul in South Bend, Indiana, notes that the French equivalent of the phrase have other fish to fry, meaning to have other things to do, is avoir d’autre chats a fouetter, or literally, to have other cats to whip. In Italian, a similarly creepy...
The anatomy of effective prose, and the poetry of anatomy. Ever wonder what it’d be like to audit a class taught by a famous writer? A graduate student’s essay offers a taste of a semester studying with author Annie Dillard. Also, what...
Peigner la girafe, literally to comb the giraffe, is French for being stuck with a tedious, useless, or annoying task. Canadian author Mark Abley includes it in Watch Your Tongue: What Our Everyday Sayings and Idioms Figuratively Mean., along with a...
How often do you hear the words campaign and political in the same breath? Oddly enough, 19th-century grammarians railed against using campaign to mean “an electoral contest.” Martha and Grant discuss why. And, lost in translation: a...
Our conversation about Spanish idioms involving food prompted a tweet from Tijuana, Mexico: del plato a la boca, se cae la sopa, or between the dish and the mouth, the soup spills, or don’t count your chickens before they hatch. A similar idea is...