Hey, look: there are three brand-new episodes to tell you about! Each includes a few rounds of devious word puzzles cooked up by our quiz guy John Chaneski, as well as: Last weekend, “Secret Gibberish”: piggyback gibberish the...
Football, like most sports, brings its own set of idioms and jargon that ride the line between cleverness and cliche. The adjective multiple describes a player, an offense or defense, or even a whole team that has multiple threats or talents. And a...
Beast means something like awesome or cool among fifth and sixth graders. Elaine, a speech therapist at a school in Indianapolis, called to share that her students say that is so beast and I beasted that. The verb form has appeared in college slang...
How much humor and personality can you pack into a 140-character update? A lot, it turns out. Martha and Grant talk about funny Twitter feeds. Also this week, the origins of skosh and “can’t hold a candle,” why dragonflies are...
Why do we call our biceps guns? The slang lexicographer Jonathon Green suggests that the metaphor first pops up in baseball around the 1920s, when players referred to their throwing arms as guns. Believe it or not, the early baseball pitchers...
You know those dull sports clichés like “We came to play” and “He left it all on the field”? They’re called bromides. The hosts explain the connection between the tired platitude and the sedative called potassium...