Why do baseball announcers say that a pitcher who throws a high fast ball is bringing high cheese? The cheese might be related to big cheese, a term that in turn may go back to Hindi and related languages where chiz means “thing.” This is part of a...
Michelle in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders about the origin of alley-oop!, which she says when hoisting her toddler. It’s from French allez, the imperative of aller meaning “to go” and houp or hop, an onomatopoeic utterance made while expending...
Sherry in Williamsburg, Virginia, has long used the phrase cute little whiffet, a fond way of referring to something small and adorable, such as a chubby baby. Since the late 1700s, the term whiffet has been used to denote “a small, insignificant...
Carol in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders why if you bake something and don’t rely on pre-mixed ingredients, you’re said to bake it from scratch. This expression originally referred to a line scratched into the ground to mark the starting point of a...
Suzanne in Williamsburg, Virginia, but grew up in Southern California, where she used the term go-aheads for the rubber-soled shoes that other people call flip-flops or rubber thongs or zoris. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Go...
Katrina in Williamsburg, Virginia, asks if it’s pretentious to use the word said to describe something previously referred to. Using said to mean the aforesaid or the aforementioned is far more common in legal documents, but there’s nothing...
