If you’re going to hit the road in a motor home, best to bone up on some of the slang used by RV enthusiasts, like stinky slinky, PUPs, and gassers. A stinky slinky is a sewer hose, a PUP is a pop-up camper, and a gasser is a motor home powered by...
Candace from Memphis, Tennessee, wonders about the phrase You’re eating me out of house and home. The emphatic doublet house and home is part of a long tradition that includes scared out of house and home and chased out of house and home. Even...
When your server brings food to the table and inquires as to who ordered which dish, that’s informally known in the restaurant biz as auctioning. If your meal is delayed because the person who took your order forgot about it, that’s called a pocket...
Susie Dent’s murder mystery Guilty by Definition (Bookshop|Amazon) follows a lexicographer in Oxford who becomes a sleuth of a different kind, seeking the culprit in a long-unsolved killing. A lexicographer herself, Dent includes lots of obscure and...
A Navy vet recalls learning the slang term gundeck, meaning “to sign off on checks or reports without fully completing them.” A possible origin involves a ship’s gun deck, either as a place where sailors hid to avoid duties or where navigational...
Dilly-dally comes from Anglo-French dalier, which means “to chat” or “act playfully,” making it a linguistic relative of dally, “to trifle with” or “to spend time frivolously,” and dalliance, a “frivolous act.” This is part of a complete episode...
