Zooming down a snow-covered hill on a wooden structure with runners goes by many names across North America including sledding, sliding, sleighing, coasting, and tobogganing. In parts of the United States, it’s also called sleigh riding, and...
If you have two dogs that share a toy, do you write that as my dogs’ toy or my dogs’s toy? It’s one of those things to which we can come up with a logical answer, but then later we’ll catch ourselves doing a different...
Janet in Tucson, Arizona, wonders about a phrase she once saw on a business card: Fortune Favors the Audacious. It’s a translation of a saying that goes back to antiquity, with many variations, including “fortune favors the brave”...
Alex in Lexington, Kentucky, is curious about the term sidesaddle gift. It denotes a gift that the giver ends up using at least as much as the recipient does, such as a luggage rack that a frequent guest gives to their host family. The term...
Since the early 19th century, the term collywobbles referred to “gastrointestinal distress.” This word may derive from colic, or “abdominal pain,” plus the word wobbles, referring to something unsteady, suggesting “a...
Erin grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, but when she moved to New York City, she found that people often told her she pronounces Erin as if it’s spelled like the masculine name Aaron. Has Erin been pronouncing her own name wrong all these years...