Andy from Kensington, Maryland, wonders about the word sycophant. Among the ancient Greeks, a blackmailer or someone who maliciously prosecuted others was a sykophantēs, a word that comes from the Greek sykon, meaning “fig,” and phainein, “to show.”...
Tiffany in Lexington, South Carolina, found dreep and dreepy in Patricia Wentworth’s 1937 mystery The Case is Closed (Bookshop|Amazon), where a sharp young protagonist applies them to people she finds weak or overwrought. Dreep and dreepy are...
