A young woman from Portland, Oregon, seeks a noun to denote something fake or otherwise dubious. She doesn’t want an obvious swear word, but also doesn’t like the ones she found in the thesaurus. She thinks malarkey, poppycock, and flim-flam sound...
A young woman is puzzled when her boyfriend’s father says he was looking for someone who needs a good boy Friday. It’s most likely a reference to Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. The title character spends 30 years on a remote tropical...
A young woman who works as a nanny wants to know why the term charge is used to refer to the youngsters she cares for. Charge goes back to a Latin root meaning, “to carry,” and it essentially has to do with being responsible for something difficult...
If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it like Shakespeare: Thou unhandsome smush-mouthed mush-rump! Thou obscene rug-headed hornbeast! The Shakespeare Insult Generator helps you craft creative zingers by mixing and matching the Bard’s own...
A young woman in Charleston, South Carolina, owns a boa constrictor named Wayne, and wonders if it’s correct to say that her father isn’t a fan of Wayne’s. Such double possessives are fine, and have been in use for centuries. This is part of a...
If someone offered you a croaker with an old man’s face, would you accept? You should! Croaker is a slang term for a hundred dollar bill. Did you ever wonder why we turn up the air conditioning to bring the temperature down? Plus, the tricky debate...
