Listeners are sharing their favorite terms for coffee that’s weak, including warm wet, branch water, pond water, scared water, and in the immortal words of Ani DiFranco, just water dressed in brown. One listener has a friend in North Dakota...
Bill calls from Bulverde, Texas, to discuss the word for a technique his Indiana-born family used to get the sluggish last bit of ketchup out of a bottle. They’d add a bit of water, and say they were wabashing it. What possible connection would the...
Shelby calls from Rockville, Indiana, to ask about the origin of the phrase keep your powder dry. Many people surmise it derives from words uttered by Oliver Cromwell, but there’s no recorded evidence of this. The phrase first pops up in the early...
buffet flat n.— «From Twenty-second street south in Michigan avenue, Wabash avenue, State street, and the cross streets as far south as Thirty-first street is a rich district of the so-called buffet flats. There, too, can be found...