When Julius Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon River and march against his rival in Rome, he supposedly said Alea jacta est, or “The die is cast,” indicating that at that point, there was no going back. The phrase is a reference to rolling a die, but...
Tony says when he was growing up in Orange County, California, he and his friends would use the exclamation Moded! meaning “In your face!” or “Busted!” This expression and variations of it such as Molded! and Moted! were said to someone who is...
Are your nightstand books all over the place? Why not stack ’em into a bookmash? A bookmash is a kind of found poetry formed from book titles! And we all know that honesty is the best policy. But does that mean you should correct the grammar of your...
Where does the term one-off come from? Among British foundry workers in the 1950s, the number of units produced from a given mold was designated with the word off. So if twenty widgets came off the line, you’d call that batch a twenty-off. A one...
Boil up some pig neck bones, add some liver sausage and buckwheat, mold it in a loaf, then slice, fry, and serve with syrup. Some folks call that scrapple, but a Milwaukee woman’s family calls it pannas. This is part of a complete episode...
was-husband n.— «Levangie Grazer thinks that acrimonious divorces are “so 1990s,” replaced by happily co-existing exes in the mold of Demi Moore and Bruce Willis. She even coined a term for today’s men who remain in their former wives” lives. “He...
