The new book Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern (Bookshop|Amazon) is a fascinating history about the colorful characters who attempted to reinvent the complicated Chinese script to adapt it for use with modern...
Jeremy calls from Charleston, South Carolina, to say that when he lived in southeast New Hampshire, he was puzzled by the use of a seemingly negative response to indicate something positive. For example, if he said I drive a red car and his listener...
Two familiar terms that have inspired lots of bogus etymologies are “dead ringer” and “spitting image.” “Dead ringer” probably comes from horse racing, where a ringer is a horse that may look like other horses in a race but is actually from a higher...
A Connecticut cop says his dad, a retired professor of English and comparative literature at Yale, has been reading his son’s police reports. They disagree about whether complainant is a legitimate word, or whether it should be complainer. This is...
q school n.— «After graduating from Yale, Lee spent the next two years playing on the Futures Tour—the equivalent of baseball’s minor leagues. Lee was then invited this past winter to enter qualifying school—or “Q School” as it is known among...
Which is correct for describing a close family resemblance: spittin’ image or spit and image? Grant and Martha discuss the possible origins of these expressions, including a recent hypothesis that’s sure to surprise. This is part of a complete...