Fess up: do you have a pet name for your car? How about your computer? Martha and Grant discuss the urge to give nicknames to inanimate objects in our lives. Also, why do we speak of vetting a political candidate? And what in the world is a zoo...
lid n.— «Eighteen minutes later, Samantha Tubman, the Obama staffer charged with corralling and shepherding the press pool, gave it “a lid.” That is, she conveyed the word from Mr. Obama, through his security detail, that he would not be...
paseo millonario n.— «Banco de Costa Rica said in a press release that night-time ATM operations represent only 7 to 8 percent of transactions. For the most part, these three banks have taken the security measure due to the common...
Phil in Indianapolis asks about the verb vet, now common in political talk. It comes from veterinarian. The term was in horse racing by the mid-1800s, when a vet checked horses before a race to make sure they were sound and hadn’t been tampered with...
back up the truck v. phr.— «The safety of these securities caused financial firms to load upon on them (“back up the truck,” in Wall Street parlance). They were considered so safe that financial firms used borrowed funds to buy more, and...
waterfall structure n.— «A single trust might be further sliced and diced to create different derivative securities, each one subordinated to the next in terms of the claim on cash flow. In the event of a default, the highest-rated—and...