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Up in the Papers

Young women used to be warned that a lady’s name should appear in the newspaper only three times: at her birth, upon her marriage, and at her death. In much the same way, the admonition “Don’t get your name all up in the...

Jacked-Up

Is being jacked up a good thing or a bad thing? It depends. To jack up means “to raise up,” as with a car on a lift. But jack up also has a negative meaning, perhaps deriving from hijack or blackjack, suggesting that something’s...

Children vs. Kids

Is it wrong to refer to children as kids? One discerning mother, when asked about her kids, always replied, “I don’t raise goats, but my children are fine.” Grant explains that as early as the 1600s, the word kids had popped up to...

Mud Ducks

A Minnesotan who relocated to Wisconsin gets called a mud duck, and wants to know why. Much in the way Wisconsinites get referred to as cheese heads, it’s really a harmless bit of nomenclature from a cross-state rivalry. In hunting, the term...

Hootenanny

What does hoot mean? You might describe someone as a real hoot. But is the hoot in the phrase “not give a hoot” a different kind of hoot? Grant explains that in the positive case, hoot is a shortening of hootenanny, a informal party with...

negative operating cycle

negative operating cycle  n.— «You can buy an iPod nano on Apple, Best Buy, etc. for about $149. Amazon sells it for $134. That’s probably cost price. It turns out that Amazon can sell almost everything at cost price and still make a...

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