Nikki in Charlotte, North Carolina, shares the story of a man who casually told passersby You dropped your pocket, prompting them to check for something that wasn’t there in the first place. That silly saying reminds her of playing pool and trying...
Marco from San Diego, California, is curious about why sportscasters speak of a player who put English on a ball. The expression appears to have begun with British players of billiards and snooker, who first figured out how to give a ball some extra...
utility computing n.— «There’s another term for this: Utility computing. It’s the idea that server systems will no longer need to be managed as a set of boxes, but instead as a pool of virtualized resources. These resources can be scaled up or...
dark pool n.— «“The situation now is that the CFTC is sitting there looking at one screen, one piece of the picture, which is whatever is happening on the exchanges. Meanwhile, an increasing volume in dollars is taking place in the form of over-the...
scrap fever n.— «A fence was cannibalized by vandals at Ravine pool, and the pump room at Collins Pool—which the city will not open this year but could have used for parts—was stripped of metal.…Scrap fever, as it is sometimes called, has also...
shoefiti n. pairs of shoes, with laces tied, thrown over power lines, trees, and elsewhere. Editorial Note: There’s a shoefiti photo pool at Flickr. Etymological Note: This term appears to have been coined by Ed Kohler. (source: Double-Tongued...
