“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...
Corby in San Diego, California, grew up hearing Navy fighter-pilot slang from her father. A pilot who bangs off the cat launches from an aircraft carrier by catapult, and the meatball is the amber light in the optical landing system that helps line...
If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it like Shakespeare: Thou unhandsome smush-mouthed mush-rump! Thou obscene rug-headed hornbeast! The Shakespeare Insult Generator helps you craft creative zingers by mixing and matching the Bard’s own...
Ham-and-egger job, for a botched or below-standard effort, grew out of boxing slang. A ham-and-egger was a palooka: a low-rung fighter who filled out a card, took whatever small payday or meal came with it, and wasn’t expected to shine. The phrase...
It’s the Up Goer Five Challenge! Try to describe something complex using only the thousand most common words in English. It’s a useful mental exercise that’s harder than you might think. Also, if you want to make a room dark, you might turn off the...
We spoke earlier about cumshaw artists, or people who get things done by crafty stealing or bartering. Alan Johnson from Plano, Texas, told us a story from his Air Force days in Vietnam, when he and some comrades stole a bunch of plywood by sneaking...