Skip, a sailing enthusiast from Gainesville, Florida, has been pondering radio protocols, such as the distress signal mayday!, and sécurité, which announces any of various warnings. There’s also pan-pan, repeated three times, a call that...
Your telephone is for talking, right? Or is it? We’re guessing it’s been a while since you sat next to a telephone waiting for it to ring. In fact, maybe you’re one of those people who HATE to see that voicemail message light...
Long before English speakers adopted the suffix –orama, as in Scoutorama and smell-o-rama, there was French word panorama referring to “a great display or spectacle.” Panorama comes from Greek words that mean “whole view...
green bomber n.— «Mr Wafawarova was a key official in the Ministry of Youth in Zimbabwe responsible for the training youth militias to torture in camps around the country. The youth militias known in Zimbabwe as “green...
dodgepot n.— «The so-called moderate voice of Islam as repesented by the Muslim Council of Britain, is affilliated to some real dodge-pot radical organisations.» —“Re: Panorama finds ‘moderate’ Muslims Guilty of Heinous Crime...