Amy in Bozeman, Montana, grew up hearing her parents say “Coventry” on noisy family road trips, meaning “be quiet,” often followed by “and fold your hands.” The family usage may be related to the British expression send to Coventry, meaning “to...
Evan from Dallas, Texas, asks whether decimate should only mean destroying one-tenth of something or whether it can mean generally destroying it. The word goes back to a Roman military punishment in which one in ten mutinous soldiers was killed, but...