The Google Books Corpus from Mark Davies at Brigham Young University tags words in Google Books with their parts of speech, so you can search how words really combine. For example, suitcase often follows battered, making battered suitcase a cliché...
Hello, fellow wordies! We hope this week’s archive edition isn’t “a few pickles short of a jar” or “a few peas short of a casserole.” We talk about these and other phrases for “not measuring up.” Also:...
arm hangover n.— «“After the last outing in Tampa I had what I call an arm hangover,” Bannister said. “It was extra sore. I tried to get ready, but I honestly just didn’t have it tonight. I didn’t punch anybody out until that...
fallstreak hole n.— «“Hole punch clouds,” also known as “fallstreak holes,” occur when patches of high cloud freeze and fall as ice crystals, leaving a dramatic gap behind.» —“Holes over Louisiana” Cloud...
What does the expression egg on have to do with chickens? Nothing, actually. Martha explains why, and tells the story of how the term curate’s egg came to mean “something with both good and bad characteristics.”
Hey! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words," which this week was called "entertainingly erudite" by William Safire in the New York Times. Suh-weet! Our latest erudition came in the form of talk about "apple...
