It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A documentary film called My Beautiful Stutter follows youngsters at a summer camp specifically for stutterers. It’s a place for finding acceptance, support, and confidence for navigating the larger world. And:, “The High Priestess of...
The phrase throw in the towel meaning “give up,” stems from boxing competitions in the late 19th. If a boxer’s team wanted to stop the fight—usually because their fighter was taking too much punishment—they would literally throw a towel into the air...
For at least three centuries, declaring I’ll eat my hat! has indicated that the speaker is so certain they’re right, that if they’re not, they’re willing to swallow their chapeau. Variations of this phrase include I’ll eat my boots, I’ll eat my cap...
Deb in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, says that when her mother was disappointed or annoyed she’d say Wouldn’t that just cork you? The idea here is that in the same way that a cork that stops up a bottle, an unexpected or irritating event...
A psychiatric home health worker is curious about the use of nuthouse to mean “a mental health facility.” This term goes back to the turn of the 20th century. The word nuts itself once had an extremely positive connotation, referring to...