She sells seashells by the seashore. Who is the she in this tongue twister? Some claim it’s the young Mary Anning, who went on to become a famous 19th-century British paleontologist. Dubious perhaps, but the story of her rise from seaside...
We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing...
Are there words and phrases that you misunderstood for an embarrassingly long time? Maybe you thought that money laundering literally meant washing drug-laced dollar bills, or that AM radio stations only broadcast in the morning? • A moving new...
Mary in Charlotte, North Carolina, says that her parents used to refer to the time before she was born as back when you were chasing flies in Egypt, the equivalent of when you were just a twinkle in your mama’s eye or twinkle in your...
Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, wonders when words like senior and senior citizen came to mean “elderly.” Senior comes from Latin senex, “old,” the source also of Senate and senile. In the 1930s, a politician helped popularize...
Jeepers creepers! Pass the gleepers! Mary in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wonders if anyone else uses the term gleepers to mean “a pair of tongs.” Gleepers may be just her own family’s term. Some people refer to them as clackers...