Mary Judy in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, says when her mom was particularly frazzled or disheveled, she’d say she felt as if she’d been pulled through a knothole backwards. The expression goes back to the early 19th century. Variants include dragged...
A wine expert with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a minor in French wonders about the origin of the term sommelier. It shares a root with sumpter, meaning “pack animal.” Sommelier used to refer generally to the person in charge of the...
Let’s settle this once and for all: George Bernard Shaw is responsible for the sentiment behind the quote, “Youth is wasted on the young.” But Fred Shapiro’s Yale Book of Quotations indicates that the history of the saying isn’t so simple. This is...
