An eight-year-old from San Diego wonders about the origin of the term bullseye. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bullseye Origin” Hello, you have a wait with words. Hello, my name is Jack. I’m calling from San...
An Omaha, Nebraska man wonders about starting a sentence with the word anymore, meaning “nowadays.” Linguists refer to this usage as positive anymore, which is common in much of the Midwest and stems from Scots-Irish syntax. This is part...
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...