Mia in Sumter, South Carolina, wonders: Is there a better term than adult child to describe one of your children who’s now a grownup? It’s hard to come up with a better, one-word expression for one’s adult offspring, and words such as spawn, progeny, offspring, issue, crotch fruit, fruit of my loins, and kidult sound awkward and clunky, so for now, adult child is your best option. This is part of a complete episode.
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...
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