Which is correct: rest on one’s laurels or rest on one’s morals? The first one right phrase. It refers to refusing to settle for one’s past accomplishments. In classical times, winners of competitions were awarded crowns made from...
Is it cheating to say you’ve read a book if you only listened to it on tape? Over the centuries, the way we think about reading has changed a lot. There was a time, for example, when reading silently was considered strange. Plus, what do you...
Chances are you’re not familiar with most of the books that win the Nobel Prize in literature because most of them aren’t translated into English. Fortunately, Words Without Borders is doing something about that. This is part of a complete...
A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you’ll wake up? Yep, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor...
market for lemons n.— Note: Coined by George Akerlof, who won a Nobel Prize in Economics for the paper he wrote that popularized the term. «Indeed, it would seem that a “market for lemons” is rapidly developing in credit...
ambulance chasing n.— «In 1977, Steven Weinberg, then two years shy of the Nobel Prize in Physics, decided to do a little of what some theorists call “ambulance chasing.” He heard a rumor, while spending a year at Stanford, that...