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...
Mehran of San Antonio, who grew up in Iran, notes that in Farsi, khaki means earthy or down-to-earth. English got the word through British military use in South Asia. By the 1840s, soldiers in northern India or what is now Pakistan were wearing a...
Left-handers are called southpaws, but righties aren’t commonly known as northpaws. That’s because being right-handed is the default, and the more colorful terms are applied to the exception, not the rule, such as the Australian term for...
Dining on a budget? Just whip up some necessity mess or a potato bargain. That’s a pork, onion, and potato stew popular in Eastern Massachusetts. Or how about some Georgia ice cream? It’s a North Florida term for grits. Martha shares a...
Judy from New York asks whether enamored of or enamored with is the better choice. In North American English, both constructions appear, but enamored of is more common and less likely to distract readers; British English strongly favors enamored of...
A fifth-year senior? That term is so 2007. These days, college students just refer to that extra year of school as taking a victory lap. Grant shares this and other examples of campus slang collected by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill...
