The books we love as children may influence our careers more than we realize. As a child, Martha was fascinated with stories of cracking codes, and Grant loved books with glossaries–not that far from the kind of work they do today. A caller...
Cat face is a cute way to describe something like a piece of fruit or a tree that’s grown in on itself, giving it a puckered kind of indentation. Particularly in the African-American community, it’s used to denote a wrinkle to be ironed...
What’s the difference between an orchard and a grove? People plant orchards with trees meant to bear fruit or nuts, whereas groves aren’t necessarily planted. So an orange grove might be more accurately called an orange orchard. The problem is...
A 1904 dialect collection tipped us off to this variation on the idea of going to the land of milk and honey: “Going to find the honey spring and the flitter tree,” flitter being a variant of fritter, as in something fried and delicious...
Greg Pliska’s game Double Definition uses a cryptic-crossword trick: each clue gives two meanings that point to the same word, with no separate wordplay half. A clue such as trim a tree splits neatly in two, and crazy flying mammals works the same...
Betty from Christiansburg, Virginia, remembers older women saying a man was “out back resting on his laurels,” and wondered whether it simply meant taking a nap. The phrase comes from the laurel wreaths awarded to victorious athletes and honored...