Barb in Boston, Massachusetts, once worked on Wall Street for a British bank that had an office that handled tizzy-hunting, devoted to uncovering scams and fraud. In A Dictionary of the Underworld (Bookshop|Amazon), slang lexicographer Eric Partridge says tizz-worker was a term used in the 1920s to denote a “confidence man,” tizz being is short for tizzle, meaning “swindle” or “fraud.” In old Cockney slang, tizzy, also spelled tizzi, means “sixpence.” This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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