Nancy Friedman is a naming and branding expert with a fantastic newsletter about language, Fritinancy which recently covered the neologism stinge-watching. It’s the opposite of binge-watching, and refers to the act of spacing out viewings of a...
The exclamation shiver me timbers! has nothing to do with being cold. A different verb shiver means “to shatter into small pieces,” and timbers refers to the wooden beams that make up the structure of a ship’s hull and ribs. Sailors once used...
The Swedish term hemmablind literally means “home blind,” and refers to that state when you’ve lived in your home so long you no longer notice its flaws or your own clutter. This handy Swedish term is one of several introduced in the reality TV...
Stellar first sentences from Bianca Bosker’s Cork Dork (Bookshop|Amazon) about her quest to become a sommelier and from A Tale of Two Cities (Bookshop|Amazon) by Charles Dickens.This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “It Was...
Elena in Mt. Holly, North Carolina, wonders why beeline means “a direct route.” Well, once a bee has gathered sufficient nectar from flowers, she flies in a straight course back to the hive. In The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 1837...
Sean from Buffalo, New York, says that whenever someone burped, his mother would say Well, bring it up again and we’ll vote on it. There are many of these so-called wrongs of passage, such as Six more and we’ll have 7-Up! Another good...