Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...
Following our conversation about fossicking for gemstones, a listener in Melbourne, Australia, points out that where he’s from, emu is slang for a person who picks up discarded tickets at a racetrack, hoping to find an accidentally discarded...
This week’s puzzle from Quiz Guy John Chaneski requires coming up with a four-word phrase that contains the words with the in the middle. For example, if the clues are “A person who behaves in a way that indicates romantic interest” and...
Fans of The Great British Bake Off (known in the U.S. as The Great British Baking Show because of a trademark issue) know that you don’t want your baked goods to be stodgy or claggy. The verb to stodge, meaning “to stuff,” goes...
Commonly heard in Australia, fair dinkum is used to describe something “authentic” or “legitimate.” This phrase is also used as an intensifier. Less common versions: square dinkum and straight dinkum. The expression fair...
If you want to describe people who have an overly high opinion of themselves, here’s some handy Spanish slang: In Argentina, you might describe such a person as Tarzán de maceta, or “Tarzan of the flowerpot.” You might also call...