The 2010 winner of the “Best Picture” Oscar has a Seattle woman wondering about the term hurt locker. Ben Zimmer wrote about it recently in his column at the Visual Thesaurus and we talk about it, too. Here’s the searing poem by...
A Seattle-area veteran remembers that in Vietnam he and others like him were known as cumshaw artists. They were the guys who scared up and “permanently borrowed” whatever their unit needed— gasoline, vehicle parts, or whiskey for a...
protestival n.— «Somewhere around 300,000 people converged on the Seattle waterfront Saturday and Sunday to attend the 19th annual Seattle Hempfest, the world’s largest marijuana “protestival,” as organizers like to call it...
Seattle polite n.— «Seattle is commonly referred to as the Emerald City, which implies that we see ourselves as a gleaming jewel (and perhaps earth friendly as well), a showplace of what a good city should be. We favor getting things done...
Memorial Day good wishes to you and the remembered. Here's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." Did you miss us? There was no newsletter last week, so now we have two brand-spanking-new episodes to share. This past...
Pugetopolis n.— «Pugetopolis is a term boosters use to express the ambitions of creating a massive city that will extend from Olympia to Bellingham, and cynics and critics—and what I like to think of as reasonable people—think of...