One secret to writing well is … there is no secret! There’s no substitute for simply sitting down day after day to practice the craft and learn from your mistakes. Plus, childhood mixups around word definitions can lead to some funny stories. After...
Rasoul from Mashad, Iran, writes to ask why in English the phrase fat chance actually means “little or no chance” — a slim chance, in other words. Fat chance is an ironic usage, much like the phrase big deal which is often used to mean just the...
Why are some book titles so incredibly long? A caller complains about book-title inflation, usually consisting of a shorter title followed by a colon and a longer subtitle that seems to sound important and ends with the words “and What To Do About...
velvet coup n.— «A senior official with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Brig. Gen. Yadollah Javani, was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying opposition leaders, including Mir Hussein Moussavi, who came second in the June 12 ballot, should...
Iran-geles n.— «The US, they told me, was a good place and many Iranians migrated there, especially to Los Angeles, which they had taken to calling “Iran-geles.”» —“Sky’s the limit for Iran’s night callers” by Glenda Kwek Sydney Morning...
U-turn transaction n.— «Iranian banks and other institutions could previously send transactions through US banks as long as they were initiated by a non-Iranian or American bank outside the US and ended in a non- Iranian or American bank outside...