Tiffany in Lexington, South Carolina, found dreep and dreepy in Patricia Wentworth’s 1937 mystery The Case is Closed (Bookshop|Amazon), where a sharp young protagonist applies them to people she finds weak or overwrought. Dreep and dreepy are...
Why do we say we are going to nuke some food when we’re simply heating it in the microwave? The earliest recorded instance of nuking food in this way comes from a 1982 article in the University of North Carolina student newspaper. It’s...
A fan of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Dancing in the Dark” called to say that she’s noticed the lyrics are awfully sad for such a peppy tune, and wonders if there’s a word for this phenomenon. Lyrical dissonance would do the...