In English, to beat around the bush, means “to talk while avoiding another topic” or “to talk without ever getting to the point.” A similar German phrase translates “to go like a cat around the hot porridge.” This...
The phrase ignorance gone to seed invokes an agricultural metaphor. Picture a field that is so far gone it’s no longer flowering and is now beyond the point of further cultivation. This is part of a complete episode.
Hey, friends! Since we last emailed you, we’ve aired two new episodes of the show: Lie Like a Rug — Cut a chogi meaning to “take a shortcut,” plus sufficiently suffonsified, make ends meet, belly robber, slang from Albuquerque, gender...
“I won’t even mention how beautiful she is, but you should really see her photo.” Rhetorical statements like this one, where the point is actually made by pretending to avoid it, is often called paralipsis or paraleipsis. It comes...
Why do we refer to people of questionable sanity as nuts, nutty, or nut-cases? In the early 1600s, a nut was considered something “pleasing” or “delightful.” Its meaning then transferred to someone who liked something...
In an earlier episode, we discussed various meanings for the term stove up. One meaning of stove up is “to be in pain from work or exercise to the point where it’s hard to move.” Similarly, lots of athletes will get stoved fingers...