In the 1920’s, Americans were warned of a new danger sweeping across the country. This menace that harmed people’s health, ruined minds, and threatened marriages. The culprit? The national obsession with a new form of entertainment: crossword...
Rich in Jackson, Wyoming, is searching for a word for using natural objects such as a rocks, driftwood, or antlers, as decoration. He considered the German Natur, “nature,” and Kunst, “art,” but it didn’t quite fit. Found object art has been used to...
A San Antonio, Texas, listener recalls that when she was a youngster, she’d pester her mother by asking the name of lots and lots of rocks on the ground. Her mother eventually began referring to those specimens as leaverites — as in “leave ’er right...
leaverite n.— «I always carry a rock hammer and a gunny sack, and when I see a likely piece of jasper or agate, I chip a corner to see how it holds up. Like as not, the whole stone may shatter making it into leaverite (leave-‘er-right there where...
leverite n. (also leaverite) a worthless stone or rock, especially one mistaken as being valuable. Editorial Note: Paul Dickson writes in Family Words (1998, p. 79), “Heaverite, according to Raymond J. Nelson of Cody, Wyoming, is a rock that, upon...
leaverite n.— «“It’s ’leaverite,'” says Smith of one specimen: “Leave ‘er right there.” But after a few more pans of sand the kids hit paydirt.» —“A Madness for Moonstones” by Anne H. Oman Washington Post (Weekend-10) Nov. 16, 1979. (source: Double...