Catina from Abilene, Texas, says her young daughter and her friends fondly refer to each other with the word sigma. The slang terms sigma and sigma male were originally used in the manosphere to denote “an outsider,” and carried a somewhat...
Stephanie in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was puzzled when a colleague used the expression like grabbing a wolf by the ears to describe an impossible task. Like the idiom to have a tiger by the tail, it suggests the paralyzing difficulty of having hold of...
Gifts for book lovers: Martha recommends one for lovers of libraries and another for students of Spanish. Grant suggests some enchanting novels for young readers. When it comes to books, though, you can’t always judge them by their original...
We all know that lusty two-note whistle directed at an attractive passerby. But how did that particular sound come about? If we trace the earliest record of that sound, known as a “wolf whistle,” we find this 1943 Tex Avery cartoon. This...
“Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices” is a new exhibit at the British Library in London featuring the earliest printed versions of Beowulf, the Wycliffe and King James Bible, and the oldest known example of written English. This...
howling survey n.— «Every so often, they would stop their truck, step out, and howl. The technique, known as a howling survey, is one way for wildlife officials to make contact with and count the number of wolves in an area.» —“New...