rambler n.— «Last night we spent our first night in the house we’ll occupy for at least the next 12 months. In local parlance it’s a “rambler”—one floor, no basement, supposedly a scaled-down postwar variant of the ranch-style house...
Here’s another newsletter from A Way with Words. On this past weekend’s show we mused over the idea of reading books on electronic devices, talked about “tow-headed,” and got to the German origins of “going to Buxtehude...
Bongiorno! In this week's podcast, a caller asks a delicate question about “blue bark shipment,” an expression involving the transport of deceased members of the military. Martha and Grant discuss the challenge of tracking down its...
staff riding n.— «Soweto youths aren’t alone in their crazy train-surfing habits.…James Oatway first encountered the local variant, otherwise known as “staff riding,” while at City Press. “I was asked by the picture editor to...
ibby-jibbies n.— Note: A variant of “heeby-jeebies.” «Now, personally I’ve always had the ibby-jibbies about putting my amphibians in my refrigerator, for fear of killing them.» —“Re: toads” by Michael R...
snip n.— «The tools made by Santa Clara-based Affymetrix and San Diego-based Illumina identify markers that show which variant of a gene is present in an individual. These markers are called single nucleotide polymorphisms, or...