Janet in Tucson, Arizona, wonders about a phrase she once saw on a business card: Fortune Favors the Audacious. It’s a translation of a saying that goes back to antiquity, with many variations, including “fortune favors the brave” and “fortune...
When does a word’s past make it too sensitive to use in the present? In contra dancing, there’s a particular move that dancers traditionally call a gypsy. But there’s a growing recognition that many people find the term gypsy offensive. A group of...
In a nutshell refers to something that’s “put concisely,” in just a few words. The phrase goes all the way back to antiquity when the Roman historian Pliny described a copy of The Iliad written in such tiny script that it could fit inside a nutshell...