The earliest recorded appearance of the phrases a house divided cannot stand and the powers that be occurred in early English translations of the Bible. Although the exact phrase a fly in the ointment isn’t in the Bible, the idea of a dead fly...
Lacy from Virginia Beach, Virginia, says her Lebanese in-laws often use the expression ya’aburnee when addressing an adorable child. Literally it translates as “may you bury me,” the idea being that the child is so precious one...
How often do you hear the words campaign and political in the same breath? Oddly enough, 19th-century grammarians railed against using campaign to mean “an electoral contest.” Martha and Grant discuss why. And, lost in translation: a...
How do languages change and grow? Does every language acquire new words in the same way? Martha and Grant focus on how that process happens in English and Spanish. Plus, the stories behind the Spanish word gringo and the old instruction to...
Pepper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wonders why something valuable to someone is called the apple of their eye. The expression apple of one’s eye dates back to the ninth century. It comes from misunderstanding the pupil of the eye as a sphere and...
The athletic-shoe brand ASICS takes its name from the initials of the Latin motto anima sana in corpore sano, usually rendered “a sound mind in a sound body.” That wording echoes the older phrase mens sana in corpore sano, from a satire by the Roman...