A caller wonders if she’s being hypersensitive about the way her boss addresses her in emails. Can the use of an employee’s first name ever reflect a power differential? And: a community choir director wants a term for “the act of...
Carlos in Miami, Florida, is fond of the Spanish proverb El que no llora, no mama, which might be translated as “The baby who doesn’t cry doesn’t get any milk,” or literally, “The one who doesn’t cry...
You look like the hind wheels of destruction means “You look terrible!” An earlier version is the hind wheels of bad luck. This is part of a complete episode.
The low, wheeled device that auto mechanics use to slide under a car is called a creeper. This is part of a complete episode.
A second-generation Filipino-American finds that when he speaks English, his personality is firm, direct, and matter-of-fact. But when he speaks with family members in Tagalog, he feels more soft-spoken, kind, and respectful. Research shows that...
A deckhand on the Lake Champlain ferry in Burlington, Vermont, wonders if there’s a word for those accumulated chunks of ice in the wheel wells of cars. He calls them crusticles, but as we’ve discussed before, they go by lots of names...