Images of birds flutter inside lots of English words and phrases, from “nest egg” and “pecking order,” to proverbs from around the world—including a lovely Spanish saying about how birds sense light just before dawn. Plus...
How colors got their names, and a strange way to write. The terms blue and orange arrived in English via French, so why didn’t we also adapt the French for black and white? • Not every example of writing goes in one direction across the page...
A magnificent new book celebrates the richness and diversity of 450 years of written and spoken English in what is now the United States. It’s called The People’s Tongue, and it’s a sumptuous collection of essays, letters, poems...
Among the proverbs in Leo Rosten’s Treasury of Jewish Quotations (Amazon): If you drop gold and books, pick up the books first, then the gold. This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski is puzzling over proverbs around the world, but he asks for help remembering the last word of each. For example, he knows there’s a German proverb that translates as “A clear conscience is a soft willow.” No...
Nancy in Panama City Beach, Florida, remembers that as a girl, whenever she asked why her mother was looking at her, her mother would respond, “Well, can’t the cat look at the queen?” This phrase goes all the way back to the mid...