“Call up to 24 hours in advance to make a reservation.” Do those instructions mean you can call until 24 hours before the deadline, or that you should call within 24 hours of it? When a San Diego listener assumed it was the former, she...
800-pound gorilla in the room is a blend of two images: an 800-pound gorilla, apparently from the old joke about a gorilla sleeping anywhere it wants, which means something powerful enough to get its way, and the elephant in the room, the obvious...
Renee from Indianapolis, Indiana, asks about tickety-boo, an old-fashioned expression meaning “all in order,” “correct,” or “just dandy,” after hearing it often from a former boss at an Indian corporation in Florida. The phrase became especially...
Seditty, more commonly spelled siddity and also found as saditty or sadiddy, is Black American Vernacular English for someone perceived as stuck-up or acting superior. Robin in Dallas remembers hearing it from childhood, especially in African...
What exactly do you mean when you use the words couple, few, and several? Do they conjure specific numbers? The hosts disagree. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Couple, Few, and Several” Hello, you have A Way with Words...
David from Greenwich, Connecticut, asks about “fish or cut bait,” an idiom used when someone needs to make a choice rather than keep stalling. One interpretation treats “cut bait” as quitting fishing altogether and moving on to something else...