Rachel from Ashland, Virginia, wonders about the origin of paraphernalia, or “items belonging to a particular person or used for a particular activity.” In ancient Greece, the pherna was a bride’s dowry, and the parapherna was her additional...
When two people can’t gee-haw together, it means they don’t get along. The terms gee-haw, or gee and haw, come from farming, where a trained animal obeys a command to go left or right–to gee or haw, in other words. Noncompliant animals don’t gee-haw...
cargo cult economics n.— «With a new year ahead, what do we see as our future? How much of our growth and progress is real, and how much is what I call “Cargo Cult Economics,” where we end up holding sacks of straw? At the end of World War II...
cotton shot n.— «A cotton shot consists of the heroin and blood residues that are “pounded” out of a cotton remnant (sometimes an old cigarette filter) which was used in a previous injecting session to filter the heroin solution as it was drawn...