When Mary from Hanover, New Hampshire, was vacationing in Alaska, she picked up a term from the locals: sucker hole. It refers to a patch of sun peeking through the clouds, which leads tourists to assume that the weather is going to clear up. The...
Hundreds of years ago, the word girl didn’t necessarily mean a female child — in the 14th and 15th centuries, it could refer to a child of either sex. Only later did its meaning become more specific. • Some people think that referring to a...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a fill-in-the-blank puzzle about famous hip-hop rhymes. For example, from Run DMC, there’s the verse: “I’m the king of rock / There is none higher / Sucker MC’s should call me _________.” This...
A listener from Richmond, Virginia, remembers an old game called buckeye that consists of metaphorically pulling someone’s leg, then calling Buckeye! and tugging one’s own lower eyelid. Martha suggests that it may be related to a 19th...
IBGYBG n.— «On Wall Street, a new phrase was invented only a few years ago: IBGYBG. I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone, so let’s do the deal and let the suckers pay for it. Now consumers are suckered into no-income second mortgages (:hey they...
thumb-sucker n.— «For every inane segment on “Dateline” or plodding thumb-sucker on PBS, there is a smart, innovative documentary elsewhere.» —“From One Voice to Many, a New Golden Age of News” by Alessandra...