Rachel from Harrogate, Tennessee, says when she was growing up in the Cincinnati, Ohio, area, she and her fellow musicians used the term B-flat as slang for “ordinary” or “average.” In the 1938 publication New York Panorama...
Sneaky contract lingo, advice for writing well, and preserving a dying language. Say you’re scrolling through an online transaction where you’re asked to read the “Terms and Conditions.” Do you actually read them or just check the...
Apple core, Baltimore! Who’s your friend? is a playground-style apple-core tossing chant, which Travis in Madison, Wisconsin, heard from his father well into adulthood. In one version, the apple eater calls out the rhyme, waits for someone to name a...
Barack Obama wants to put people to work building roads and bridges. But how about a federal jobs program for out-of-work writers? Also: why do we call it a flight of wine? How did the haircut called a mullet get its name?
President Barack Obama hopes to boost the economy by pouring federal dollars into efforts to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure, much like the old Works Progress Administration of the 1930s. But how about reviving that other jobs program from...
mongo n. material or goods salvaged from items intended for disposal. Also as verb. Editorial Note: New evidence from the unpublished Lexicon of Trade Jargon, compiled by the Works Progress Administration, has a form of this word from before 1938:...