A man in Orlando, Florida, asks if there’s a word for slowly circling a parking lot in search of a space for your car. Slang terms for this include sharking and sharking for parking, and sometimes such drivers are jokingly called vultures. This is...
If you want to be a better writer, try skipping today’s bestsellers, and read one from the 1930’s instead. Or read something besides fiction in order to find your own metaphors and perspective. Plus, just because a city’s name looks familiar doesn’t...
The phrase ignorance gone to seed invokes an agricultural metaphor. Picture a field that is so far gone it’s no longer flowering and is now beyond the point of further cultivation. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Ignorance Gone to...
The 1909 slang collection Passing English of the Victorian Era defines the phrase to introduce shoemaker to tailor this way: “Evasive metaphor for fundamental kicking.” In other words, to introduce shoemaker to tailor means to give someone a swift...
A restaurant review in the Myanmar Times describes a steak that “could not have been more middle-of-the-road if it was glued to a cat’s eye.” This analogy makes sense only if you know that “cat’s eye” is a term for the reflective studs in the middle...
The behavior of electricity has long been likened to that of liquid: it flows in a current, and can be turned on and off in a closed system. So it’s not surprising that we talk of getting juice for a phone’s a battery by plugging it into a charging...
