Sarah in Fleming Island, Florida, is curious about the saying sometimes you eat the bear, and sometimes the bear eats you, which suggests “it’s a dog-eat-dog world,” or “eat or be eaten,” or more gently, “you win some, you lose some.” Garson...
Why are detectives in old movies and mystery novels called gumshoes? The term gumshoe derives from the image of shoes with soles made of gum rubber, which offered an improvement over the wood traditionally used for the bottom of a shoe, since those...
Many Yogisms, the quips associated with New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, were probably around before they became attached to his name. Linguist Garson O’Toole’s site Quote Investigator traces the origins of much-quoted lines and tests familiar...
There’s an old joke running around that goes as follows, “Lost: Bald, one-eyed ginger Tom, crippled in both back legs, recently castrated, answers to the name of ‘Lucky.'” Nigel Rees of The Quote Unquote Newsletter has been tracking down this oft...
An insurance fraud investigator in Milwaukee wonders if he’s correct to use a semicolon immediately after the word “however.” Grant suggests that the word and the punctuation mark should do a do-si-do. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
coin-pusher n.— «The machines, versions of which are common in arcades, are called coin-pushers. The user drops in a coin, hoping that it will force more coins off the front of a shelf. But in the case of the illegal machines, the shelf was...