Hyperbolic Headlines Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity!!!! Or maybe not. You’ve seen those breathless headlines on the internet, like “You Won’t Believe What This 7-year-old Said to The President!” They’re supposed to lure you to another...
A bed lunch is a bedtime snack, the kind a parent might offer to settle a child’s stomach before sleep. It’s another case where lunch doesn’t have to mean the midday meal, as in shift work where a legally or company-designated lunch break may happen...
Careful what you criticize! Not long ago, some words that sound perfectly normal today were considered gauche and grating on the ear. If the complainers had had their way, we couldn’t say a word like pessimism or use contact as a verb! Also, we’ll...
Did you know reading poetry improves your prose? That includes hip-hop lyrics, too. Also, how linguist can guess where you come from based on how you speak. What do you call someone who picks the chocolate out of the trail mix? Plus, champing at...
A lunch hook, in college slang from a century ago, meant “a hand”–as in, “I’m going to hook my finger through this doughnut hole.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Lunch Hook” I bet you can guess in college slang from 100 years ago...
Whatever the amount might be, “as much food as one’s hand can hold” is how Samuel Johnson defined the luncheon in his 1755 dictionary entry. Over the two centuries since, we’ve seen more than a handful of takes on lunch, and it’s the subject of a...