A 13-year-old from San Diego, California, wonders: Why do we call that breakfast staple toast instead of, say, toasted bread? It’s natural to find shortcuts for such terms; we’ve also shortened pickled cucumbers to just pickles. This is...
Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms — Martha and Grant swap stories about the games that first made them realize that playing with words and letters can be fun. Also this week, what’s a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts...
A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name unique to her family? This is part of a complete episode.
nimbleton n.— «So let’s raise a glass to big funds with a toast of sincere best wishes for their success . . . of course, I’ll be explicit about my ulterior motive: keeping the small fund space the preserve of the nimbletons. If big...
toast rack n.— «The company yesterday pleaded guilty in the Balclutha District Court to failing to take all practicable steps to ensure Stewart Leslie Michie was not exposed to hazards arising from the storage of pre-fabricated concrete...
burnt toast event n.— «A lot of it…is what we call “burnt toast” events. They’re like a near miss; you have no idea at the time how serious it is—or could have been. Sometimes it’s minor, other times maintenance teams...