It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
The term fair game, meaning someone or something that’s a legitimate target for criticism derives from old laws governing the hunting of wildlife. This is part of a complete episode.
fluff n.— «At a recycling plant in San Pedro and five other similar operations around California, giant shredding machines annually reduce 1.3 million junk cars, refrigerators and other appliances into fist-sized chunks of metal...
sputtering n.— «Metal ion creation in the semiconductor industry relies on a technique called sputtering. Traditional sputtering relies on a gas such as argon being heated to plasma and then contained by a magnetic field between a layer...
feathered fish n.— «Yet a number of Hollywood observers believed that no amount of marketing could save “W.” from being a “feathered fish”—a film whose target audience thinks it’s for someone else.» —“The Cobra” by Tad...
Cybergeddon n.— «A new term “Cybergeddon” has been coined, relating to the potential loss of intellectual property, intelligence infrastructure and related industries dealing primarily in data exchange or storage. The target...