When there’s no evening meal planned at home, what do you call that scramble to cobble together your own dinner? Some people apply acronyms like YOYO — “you’re on your own” — or CORN, for “Clean Out your Refrigerator...
Robin in Yuma, Arizona, asks about the origin of the expression fifty-eleven, which she grew up using to suggest “a large, indeterminate number.” The older and more common version is forty-eleven. Such words as fifty-eleven, forty...
An ornithologist says there’s a growing movement to change the name of a pink-footed bird currently called the flesh-footed shearwater. The movement reflects a growing understanding that using flesh-colored for “pink” fails to...
What we’re reading: Crystal Wilkinson, a member of the Affrilachian Poets, is author of The Birds of Opulence, a quiet, lyrical novel about relationships between family members, and between humans and nature, about things said and unsaid with...
Wayne in Sherman, Texas, wonders how the term pear-shaped came to describe something that’s gone badly. The expression seems to have arisen during Falklands War of the early 1980s. If you need a word for pear-shaped, there’s always pyriform...
A young woman in Charleston, South Carolina, owns a boa constrictor named Wayne, and wonders if it’s correct to say that her father isn’t a fan of Wayne’s. Such double possessives are fine, and have been in use for centuries. This...