A speech pathologist in Greensboro, North Carolina, named Linda reports that when none of her coworkers offered to take up a task, their boss voluntold one of them to do it. A jocular combination of volunteer and told, this slang is often heard in...
Jennifer, an elementary-school teacher in Tallahassee, Florida, loves saying the term chockablock, meaning “closely packed together,” and wonders about its etymology. Chock can refer to a kind of wedge used to hold something in place...
To give someone a wide berth means to provide ample room. This phrase is nautical in origin, where it means “the distance ships give each other to avoid crashing.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “To Give a Wide...
Victor Hugo’s 1874 novel Ninety-Three includes a terrifying description of a heavy cannon coming loose on board a ship, an event he calls “perhaps the most dreadful thing that can take place at sea.” This is part of a complete...
If you’re serious about writing a memoir, what topics should you include, and what can you leave out? And how honest can you really be about the other people in your life? Some of America’s leading memoirists wrote things they lived to...
Britain’s new polar research ship is named RSS Sir David Attenborough, even though an online vote overwhelmingly chose the name Boaty McBoatface. Versions of this playful construction go back at least as far as a 1987 episode of the television...
