This week it’s butterflies, belly flowers, plot bunnies, foxes, and cuckoos. Also, writing advice from Mark Twain and a wonderful bit of prose from Sara Pennypacker’s book Pax. And are there word origins? Well, does a duck swim? We’ll...
Steve in Bend, Oregon, asks: Does bully pulpit mean what people think it means? Is the bully the same as the bully you might find in a schoolyard? What did Teddy Roosevelt really mean when he said he had a bully pulpit? There’s an old meaning that...
stained-glass ceiling n.— «The Rev. Barbara Williams Riddle knows all about the stained-glass ceiling the psychological barrier that keeps women from the pulpit of large, upscale congregations.» —“The stained-glass...
sermo-mercial n.— «Church pastors have won trips to London and $1000 by mentioning Disney’s film The Chronicles of Narnia in their sermons. That contest staged by a Christian marketing firm has coined the term “sermo-mercial”...
spinksterinkdum Negro n.— «At Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Ala., where King took over the pulpit in 1954, his brilliant predecessor Vernon Johns had often taken his complacent congregation to task for being too conservative...
new shooter n.— «It was a new race over a new track, and there were several new shooters trying to knock him off. But none of Pulpit’s potential problems materialized. It was as if divine intervention was bestowed upon the colt, who...