Hey! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words," which this week was called "entertainingly erudite" by William Safire in the New York Times. Suh-weet! Our latest erudition came in the form of talk about "apple...
Word nerd Ammon Shea quit his job as a furniture mover in New York City to spend an entire year reading the entire Oxford English Dictionary. The result, in addition to eyestrain, headaches, and skeptics’ puzzlement, was Shea’s new book, Reading the...
dirty kitchen n.— «Dirty kitchen (cont.): Actually, that’s the term for a secondary kitchen, often used by Filipinos. As one reader explained to me: “We Filipinos have a small cooking area outside the house where we fry our fish, cook anchovies...
ladybug taint n.— «There’s even a name for it—“ladybug taint.” The smell, which connotes green bell peppers or roasted peanuts, is produced by ladybugs as a defense mechanism. The chemicals they release, in a class of compounds called...
fluorescent tan n.— «More than the millions who only have a fluorescent tan to show for a day’s work; more than those who swelter in airless offices which provide only the smell of a gymnasium and none of the exercise benefits.» —“Coaches on...
Charlie Brown tree n.— «Two charming young women bragged to me (within 12 hours and 50 miles of each other) that they each have a “Charlie Brown” tree—small, skinny, needleless, crooked, with only half-a-string of lights and two ornament balls on...