Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...
In Spanish, a cheapskate might be described as having a cocodrilo en el bolsillo, or a “crocodile in the pocket,” meaning they consider reaching for their wallet too perilous. In English, a stingy person may also be said to have taffy...
coolio n.— «What the trucker cap and wallet chain were to hipsters of a moment ago, the Kramden is to what my colleague Mike Albo refers to as the “coolios” of now. Leading with a belly is a male privilege of long standing, of course, a...
If English isn’t your first language, there are lots of ways to learn it, such as memorizing Barack Obama’s speech to the 2004 Democratic Convention. Martha and Grant talk about some of the unusual ways foreigners are learning to speak...
It’s one of the biggest grammatical bugaboos of all, the one that bedevils even the most earnest English students: Is it lie or lay? Martha shares a trick for remembering the difference. See below for her clip-and-save chart of these verbs...
Costanza wallet n. a bulging, overstuffed billfold or wallet. Etymological Note: After the character George Costanza in the the twelfth episode, The Reverse Peephole, of the ninth season of Seinfeld, which aired on January 15, 1998. In the episode...