Animals leave their footprints in several English words, including chatoyant, or “shimmering like a cat’s eyes” and sleuth, which is short for sleuth-hound, a kind of bloodhound used for sniffing out prey. Pets have also inspired...
You can’t kid a kidder, but you can buffalo a Buffalo buffalo, as we found out in this past weekend’s brand-new episode. We also enjoyed a magical puzzle and we explored: taking a bath or a haircut in finance uncanny valley lazy...
If you’ve accomplished something, go ahead and rest on your laurels. Martha traces this idiom back to Ancient Greece, where victors were crowned with a wreath of bay leaves from the bay laurel tree. In the 16th Century, to retire on...
The grumpy agent who writes the blog SlushPile Hell received a submission stating, “I have attached a copy of a letter I recently sent to Oprah about my book. She ends her show in September 2011, which leaves little time to select an agent...
Hola, che! In this week’s episode, it’s a game about food names! (“What would you serve to a plumber?” “Leeks.”) We also discuss how to correct a new sweetheart’s grammar, “infracaninophile,”...
Ciao! In this week's archive episode: If your family has guests over, how do you warn each other if one of you has a stray crumb on the face? Some families do so with the surreptitious code phrase, "There's a gazelle on the lawn."...