What happens when a clock gets hungry? It goes back four seconds. Martha talks about how puns weren’t always considered “bad.” Cicero praised them as the wittiest kind of saying, and Shakespeare made plenty of them, for both...
Stories From The Onion In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from...
hitling n.— «Attaching labels such as “racist” or even “Fascist” to anyone criticizing massive immigration or Multiculturalism has become so common that Norwegian anti-Islamists have coined a new word for it:...
red light fever n.— «Some people have red-light fever, they can’t wait to be in front of a camera. I can’t wait to be off the camera, basically, which isn’t to say I don’t get great pleasure when it works.» —“The Revenge Of The...
Saddam’s revenge n.— «Though Mr. Ross’s life was never imperiled during his tour, he managed to contract a particularly nasty strain of dysentery, which American soldiers call Saddam’s Revenge.» —“With ‘Patriot Act,’ Jeffrey Ross...
Haitian happiness n. severe diarrhea or dysentery. Editorial Note: Many other terms for diarrhea are constructed with quickstep or (the) trots, such green-apple trots or Saigon quickstep, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang...