Linguistic freezes, also known as binomials or irreversible pairs, are words that tend to appear in a certain order, such as now and then, black and white, or spaghetti and meatballs. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Linguistic...
“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first person to say them. As Berra...
A San Diego, California, listener shares some slang used by her father, who was a Navy fighter pilot. To “bang off the cat” is to take off from an aircraft carrier. The meatball refers to the landing system that requires lining up with an amber...
How about the phrase “on the ball”? A listener wonders if its origin derives from a landing maneuver on aircraft carriers. Does his theory hold water? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Origin of “On the Ball”” Hello, you have A Way...
only meatball in the rice n.— «So many Jew fro’s at the party that for once, it was hard to spot Alex in the crowd….except that he’s usually the only “meatball in the rice.”» —“Gawker / Lifehacker party” by justinwstephens Flickr Mar. 13, 2007...
meatball in the rice n. a dark-skinned person among a crowd of light-skinned people. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)