Ten-year-old Alex, from Oceanside, California, wonders if a cat’s flicking tail inspired the expression telltale sign, meaning “an indicator.” The word is telltale, not its soundalike telltail. About 400 years ago, a telltale was a “tattler.” Today a telltale on a sailboat is “a piece of ribbon or fabric that indicates a change in the wind,” and Australians use the word telltale to denote “the rear indicator light on a motor vehicle.” One memorable use of the term is in the title of Edgar Allan Poe chilling story, “The Tell-Tale Heart.” This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
There are many proposed origins for the exclamation of surprise, holy Toledo! But the most likely one involves not the city in Ohio, but instead Toledo, Spain, which has been a major religious center for centuries in the traditions of both Islam and...