Here’s a riddle: “Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.” Think you know the answer? You’ll find it in this week’s episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other...
BOGO n.— Note: Also abbreviated as “BOGOF.” «I was proud that she had grasped the dangers of Buy-One/Get-One (BOGO) free purchases.» —“BOGO Trap: Buy Eight, Get One Free? I Don’t Think So” by Sharon Harvey...
The answer to the riddle “Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven” is hours of sleep a night. It comes from a collection of riddles gathered from Black schoolchildren in New Orleans and printed in early...
It's time again for a newsletter from A Way with Words, public radio's program about words, language, and how we use them. This past weekend we plundered the Australian National Dictionary, which is now available in full online, by sharing...
zombie economy n.— «Yuen Pau Woo was the economist responsible for Japan in Singapore’s central bank when the Japanese bubble—helped by a run-up in real estate prices that made Park Ave. co-ops look affordable—caused the world’s second...
polocrosse n.— «Some of those who play the game jokingly refer to it as “poor man’s polo,” but polocrosse is much more than that. It’s a game that allows 5- to 10-year olds to compete against 65- to 75-year olds with nobody...