Having a chip on one’s shoulder means spoiling for a fight. Frank from Richardson, Texas, and his son wondered what kind of chip that was after hearing about a Dallas Cowboys player’s tattoo combining his draft number with a potato chip...
Have you ever offered to foster a dog or cat, but wound up adopting instead? There’s an alliterative term for that. And when you’re on the job, do niceties like “Yes, ma’am” and “No, sir” make you sound too...
No great shakes means not impressive, no big deal, or nothing much to boast about. Kat in Dallas learned it from her mother and found that friends sometimes took it for a family oddity, but the expression has been around at least since the early...
When an Austrian candy maker needed a name for his new line of mints, he took the first, middle, and last letters of the German word pfefferminz, or “peppermint,” to form the brand name PEZ. He later marketed the candies as an alternative for...
A listener in Billings, Montana, says his brother is an English teacher who corrects his pronunciation of forte, meaning “strong point.” Pedants will insist that it should be pronounced like “fort,” not “FOUR-tay,” but that reflects an assumption...
Goggle-bluffing is the train passenger’s trick of averting your line of eyesight so as to fool other passengers into not taking the seat next to you. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Google-Bluffing” Here is...