Katie in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wonders about the expression throw the book at, meaning to “try every means possible.” Did it originally involve literally throwing books? It’s just a metaphor in which the book refers to “the criminal code.” In the...
We dish about the many terms for “gossip,” including hot tea, scuttlebutt, the scoop, the 411, the lowdown, the dirt, the scoop, hot goss, the poop, the dope, the T. In prison slang, grapes means “gossip,” and particularly juicy or tragic gossip is...
Andres from San Diego, California, asks about the pokey, an old slang term for jail that still turns up in stories about prison and crime. The jail sense is probably connected with pogie or pogey, once used for a workhouse or poorhouse where people...
Jody calls are military cadences based on the exploits of Jody, an imaginary character blamed for all the things that might go wrong back home while a soldier is deployed, such as losing one’s girlfriend or car. In a master’s thesis, University of...
It’s the art of constructive feedback: If you’re a teacher with a mountain of papers to grade, you may find yourself puzzling over which kinds of notes in the margins work best. Martha and Grant discuss strategies for effective paper-grading. And...
Julio from Frisco, Texas, asks about “do me a solid,” meaning “do me a favor,” after first hearing it in a context that made him wonder if it had something to do with bowel trouble. The phrase dates at least to the 1960s and appears to come from an...