When is a mango not a mango? Why, when it’s a bell pepper, of course! An Indiana listener says she and her Kentucky in-laws have entirely different names for this vegetable. She wants to know why, so we help her sort it out.
rank and yank n.— «Before it collapsed in a heap of moral ruin, Enron periodically fired the bottom-performing 10% of its employees. What’s more meritocratic than that? The McKinsey Quarterly praised this innovative practice, known...
bottom surgery n.— «Rey always expected to go off-campus for his transition. He wound up being operated on by a private surgeon in New York City. (He received no “bottom surgery,” as it is known—few transmen do, in part because the...
transman n.— «During one of their days together, Melissa, who was immersed in campus gender activism, mentioned the concept of being a “transman” and spoke of her transmale friends.» —“When Girls Will Be Boys” by Alissa...
fish with feet n.— «Digital magazines—the flappable, page-by-page replication of a publication’s print edition, rather than content uploaded individually to a magazine’s Web site—have been around for about a decade, and Zinio has long...
wogging n.— «“If you regularly walk about 30 minutes most days of the week, you are ready to start wogging.” Wogging? It’s a silly word that means to combine walking and jogging, though not necessarily at the same time. The...