When there’s no evening meal planned at home, what do you call that scramble to cobble together your own dinner? Some people apply acronyms like YOYO — “you’re on your own” — or CORN, for “Clean Out your Refrigerator Night.” Plus, when a barista...
Ian in Clyde, North Carolina, is puzzled when a colleague uses the term blue million, meaning “a large amount.” Along with words like zillion and gazillion, this expression functions as an indefinite hyperbolic numeral. Sometimes the word blue...
Following up on our conversation about indefinite hyperbolic numerals like forty-eleven and zillion, we discuss humpty-twelve. Another slang term used to denote a large quantity is telephone numbers, which can be applied to “an excessive amount of...
Robin in Yuma, Arizona, asks about the origin of the expression fifty-eleven, which she grew up using to suggest “a large, indeterminate number.” The older and more common version is forty-eleven. Such words as fifty-eleven, forty-eleven, umpteen...
junque bond n.— «My baseball team, my rinky-dink network that covers all of greater Atlanta, my boat and 60 zillion in junque bonds.» —“Hostile Raiders—Buying Everything With Nothing” by John Hinterberger Seattle Times (Washington) June 16, 1985...