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...
Sam in Burlington, Vermont, wondered whether fraught can stand alone, as in This situation is fraught, after years of hearing fraught with peril or fraught with worry. The word is related to freight and originally had to do with loading a ship, then...
So you think you hate puns? Wait until you hear this item from a Singapore newspaper about a Japanese banking crisis. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Japanese Banking Pun” Something I recorded in my Commonplace book a...
Back in 1867 a newspaper in Nevada used the verb pungle to lovely effect: “All night the clouds pungled their fleecy treasure.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “More Pungle” We were talking about the word...
A middle-school librarian caught the Arkansas Democrat Gazette messing up the title of the second book in the Hunger Games series. The newspaper then issued an abject apology. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Newspaper...
Ralston in Dallas, who was born in Jamaica and is the youngest of seven, asks about Jamaican English washbelly, the youngest child in a family. The word can carry a teasing sense of being spoiled or indulged, not merely young. It appears in Frederic...