We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing...
Questions from young listeners and conversations about everything from shifting slang to a bizarre cooking technique. Kids ask about how to talk about finding information on the internet, how tartar sauce got its name, and if the expression high and...
Sophia is a 13-year-old from Napierville, Illinois, says she and her peers use the phrase search it up on the internet to mean look it up on the internet. Her mother says it’s look it up or just search it, not search it up. Sophia and her...
You dream of writing the great American novel, but to make ends meet, you spend your days writing boring corporate reports. There’s a difference between writing for love and writing for a living — or is there? Does a heyday have anything to do...
chaveta n.— «Deftly rolling, pressing and slicing tobacco leaves with a slab of sharp metal known as a chaveta, they sculptured perfectly cylindrical cigars—an art that requires years to master.» —“Why the Smoke Doesn’t Get in...
butterflies n.pl.— «Are you more of the Grace Kelly or Sophia Loren type? Cat eyes, invented in the 1960s often called today butterflies, are always in style. If you’re starlet material, these are for you. Kata Eyewear’s Illusion 5 as...