Tom in Indianapolis, Indiana, remembers hearing Irish pennant in the Marine Corps for a loose thread hanging from a uniform. The term belongs to the category of ethnophaulism, or ethnic slur, alongside expressions such as Irish screwdriver for...
There’s a long tradition in contra dancing of a particular move called a gypsy. Many people now consider the term gypsy offensive, however, because of the history of discrimination against people of Romani descent, long referred to as gypsies...
A Texas listener came across the word Boche in a biography of a French statesman, and wants to know: What does it mean, exactly?
Hockey mom? Staycation? Recessionista? What’s your choice for Word of the Year 2008? Also, what expression do you use to describe when it’s raining but the sun is still shining?
A cantor from a synagogue in Nyack, New York, says she’s fond of the expression “the heebie-jeebies” but recently began worrying that it might be anti-Semitic. Did the term “heebie-jeebies” originate as a slur against...
nipping n.— «Players are often extraordinarily generous, buying drinks and not merely to make opponents drunk. They are big on “nipping,” and this is no racist slur on the oriental client base: it is poker parlance for lending...