Why are detectives in old movies and mystery novels called gumshoes? The term gumshoe derives from the image of shoes with soles made of gum rubber, which offered an improvement over the wood traditionally used for the bottom of a shoe, since those...
Would you rather live in a world with no adjectives … or no verbs — and why? Also, who in the world is that director Alan Smithee [SMITH-ee] who made decades’ of crummy films? Turns out that if a movie director has his work wrested away from him and...
A Little Rock, Arkansas, caller has been going out with a Chinese woman. Her English is pretty good, but he wonders about the most polite way to correct a minor grammar mistake without ruining a new relationship. This is part of a complete episode...
jobber n.—Gloss: A wholesaler. «Within the next few years, the trio hopes to sign up 90 oil distributors (also known as jobbers) to form a group of as many as 2,000 C-stores east of the Mississippi selling private-branded Liberty gasoline...
