Tanya, calling from Xiamen, China, and originally from Marshall, Michigan, asks about dilly-dally, a phrase that surprised her coming from her 24-year-old brother. Dilly-dally is a reduplicated form of dally, from Anglo-French dalier, meaning “to...
A cumshaw artist is that clever, resourceful person in a military unit who always seems to manage to procure whatever’s needed. This term apparently derives from similar-sounding words in Mandarin, kan hsieh, or kam-si?, in the language spoken...
Dean, a Navy veteran from Lake Bay, Washington, remembers being called a cumshaw artist in Vietnam for “permanently borrowing” whatever his unit needed, from refrigerator regulators to gasoline to whiskey for a party. The term cumshaw...