As we’ve noted, in California’s Orange County, to birdie means “to drink from a bottle without touching it with one’s lips.” Elsewhere this germ-avoidant act is also called airsipping, airing, baby birding. In parts of the UK, you might sky a drink...
Look up into the night sky, and imagine that you’ve never heard the term Milky Way. What would you call that glowing band of stars across the heavens? In Sweden, it’s called Vintergatan, or “Winter Street.” In Hawaii, the Milky Way is sometimes...
For a luscious description of exactly what you will see during a total solar eclipse, check out Dan McGlaun’s site, Eclipse 2017. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Luscious Eclipse Description” We were talking earlier about...
A listener in Ellsworth, Michigan, shares a favorite simile from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bricks in...
When does a word’s past make it too sensitive to use in the present? In contra dancing, there’s a particular move that dancers traditionally call a gypsy. But there’s a growing recognition that many people find the term gypsy offensive. A group of...
Some of the more successful similes in Grenville Kleiser’s 1910 book Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases include the sky was like a peach and like footsteps on wool and quaking and quivering like a short-haired puppy after a ducking. This is part of a...
