Fess up: do you have a pet name for your car? How about your computer? Martha and Grant discuss the urge to give nicknames to inanimate objects in our lives. Also, why do we speak of vetting a political candidate? And what in the world is a zoo...
Here’s a question more and more same-sex couples face when starting a family: What names will our child call us? “Mommy and Mama”? “Mommy and Jane?” Maybe a made-up name? An Ohio woman and her female partner are...
wine track n.— «That’s because Maryland, said Thomas Schaller, associate professor of political science at University of Maryland Baltimore County, has become a “wine track” state, similar to California, New Jersey and...
“If I had my druthers…” A former Texan says the youngsters he works with in his adopted home of Ohio don’t understand this expression meaning “If I had my way.” He wants to know its origin. If you still...
spoil bank n.— «In the rolling hills just a few miles outside town, a forest of black locust, black cherry and young sugar maple grows from what the locals call spoil banks, mounds of dirt and rock tossed aside by years of strip-mining...
absence labeling n.— «Critics of the rule argue what is known as “absence labeling’” has worked great for more than a decade. When a producer states something is rbST-free, they are absence labeling. Monsanto believes absence...