A young listener wonders: Why do the words icing and frosting both refer to the idea of being cold? The names for this sweet cover on a cake refer to its appearance, not its temperature. Something similar occurs with the glaze in glazed doughnut...
A stereotype is a preconceived notion about a person or group. Originally, though, the word stereotype referred to a printing device used to produce lots of identical copies. • The link between tiny mythical creatures called trolls and modern-day...
Ray Bradbury’s dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (Bookshop|Amazon) takes its title from the temperature at which book pages burn. Some 200 copies of the first edition of the book were bound with an unusual material: asbestos. A few are still...
On our Facebook group, listeners share their terms for menopausal hot flashes, including short private vacation in the tropics, temperature tantrum, short private trip to the Sahara, and my inner child is playing with matches. This is part of a...
If it’s cold as all get-out, you’ll probably want to get to someplace warmer. The “get-out” in this informal expression might refer to being out in front, as in “the winner of all cold days,” or it could be a...
If someone offered you a croaker with an old man’s face, would you accept? You should! Croaker is a slang term for a hundred dollar bill. Did you ever wonder why we turn up the air conditioning to bring the temperature down? Plus, the tricky...