Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...
After our conversation about Off we go like a herd of turtles, often said by a parent gathering kids to leave the house, Joanna in Santa Cruz, California, shares the one she heard from her father: Here we go, laughing and scratching! In 1939...
Antimetabole, from Greek words meaning “turning about in the opposite direction,” is the rhetorical turn in “When the going gets tough, the tough get going,” where the same words come back in reverse order. Bascom in Redding, California, collects...
Good night, nurse! is an old-fashioned exclamation for surprise, disbelief, or frustration, and Debbie in Dallas, Texas, uses it as a cussword substitute. An early example dates to 1908, close to British lexicographer Eric Partridge’s estimate of...