Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been thumbing through The Devil’s Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon), the satirical work by Ambrose Bierce that provides cheeky definitions for familiar words. For example, Bierce defines the word positive as “mistaken at the...
“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first person to say them. As Berra...
It’s common for Southern moms to promise their children a Yankee dime if they complete a chore. The thing is a Yankee dime is a motherly kiss — much less exciting than an actual dime. It’s a phrase that plays on Yankee thrift, and goes back to at...
Many Yogisms, the quips associated with New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, were probably around before they became attached to his name. Linguist Garson O’Toole’s site Quote Investigator traces the origins of much-quoted lines and tests familiar...
If you’ve “seen the elephant,” it means you’ve been in combat. But why an elephant? Martha and Grant also discuss some odd idioms in Spanish, including one that translates as “your bowtie is whistling.” And what names do you call your grandparents?
Remember misunderstanding certain words as a child? Maybe you figured “cat burglars” only stole cats, or assumed guerrilla fighters must be angry apes. Martha and Grant discuss childhood misunderstandings about language. Also this week, Yankee...