Salut, superfriends! It's another newsletter from A Way with Words. This week's episode was a re-run, one that we particularly liked because it has the famed "dinner vs. supper" call, which is still generating buckets of mail...
A middle-schooler who’s reading Anne of Green Gables is puzzled by a mention of “breakfast, dinner, and supper.” She wants to know if the words “dinner” and “lunch” really interchangeable. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
stork dinner n.— «Tina Ayers, director of the obstetrics unit, explains, “The stork dinner is a celebratory dinner or lunch that we have arranged for the new mom and dad before they go home.”» —“A ‘Stork’ Dinner for Two” UC Daily News (Upper...
trade fours v. phr.— «We shared a too brief lunch during which both father and son in the special parlance of jazz musicians “traded fours,” with a rising crescendo of memories of all that Herb Pomeroy, trumpeter and inspiring teacher, had given to...
pull leather v. phr.— «But Molinas was assassinated in Los Angeles in 1975, three months after I had lunch with him at the Playboy Club. As they say in Texas, Molinas “pulled leather on the mob” in Vegas by refusing to pay his gambling debts...
cutlet n.— «All the nurses had these pretend bosom things that we would put into these period bras. We called the devices chicken cutlets; they beefed everything up a little bit. But it was so hot some days that I would take my little cutlet out...