If you’re ever near a sundial, step closer and look for a message. Many sundials bear haunting, poetic inscriptions about the brevity of life. Plus, language development in toddlers: why and how little ones pick up the exclamation Uh-oh! And a...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski cordially invites you to a wedding puzzle. For example, if Ella Fitzgerald married Darth Vader, the punny result would be either a kind of shoe or something that might convey you to the top floor of a building. Get it? This is...
Dexter from San Diego, California, says his family used the word zoris for the footwear other people call flip-flops. In Japan, the word zori refers to a type of footwear made of grass or straw, and English speakers adopted this term in the early...
Susan from Virginia Beach, Virginia, remembers a toe-counting game from her childhood that goes “This toe tight / this penny white / this toe tizzle / this penny wizzle.” She doesn’t recall the rest and has no idea where it came...
The term cowbelly is used in Louisiana to mean both a kind of work shoe and soft river mud. This kind of silt has been described evocatively by writer Conger Beasley, Jr. This is part of a complete episode.
Novelist Charles Dickens created many unforgettable characters, but he’s also responsible for coining or popularizing lots of words, like “flummox” and “butterfingers.” Also, the life’s work of slang lexicographer...