A listener from Richmond, Virginia, remembers an old game called buckeye that consists of metaphorically pulling someone’s leg, then calling Buckeye! and tugging one’s own lower eyelid. Martha suggests that it may be related to a 19th...
Making money hand over fist evokes the motion of hauling in a rope quickly, one hand passing over the other and closing into a fist. Betsy in Connecticut heard the phrase at dinner, where her daughters guessed it might come from the baseball-bat...
“He’s sharp as the corner of a round table.” “She’s so sad she’s pulling a face as long as a fiddle.” If startling similes leaving you “grinning like a basket full of possum heads,” you’ll...
pull v.—Gloss: to participate in an arm-wrestling contest. «Arm wrestling—or “pulling,” as the devotee knows it—has its subtleties, believe me.…Bean is a massive, radiant, heavy-booted man in his 50s, with a white handlebar mustache...
pull the chute v. phr.— «There was a big stigma about concussions years ago—‘Nah, he’s not that hurt.” He’s pulling the ‘chute, which is another term for pulling up lame. He’s soft. He can’t play tough...
cadillacing v.— «He moved to his right to catch a fly out, but Greg Gagne surprisingly tagged from first base and reached second when Griffey’s threw was too soft and wide. “I don’t like him ’Cadillacing’ like that,” he...