Linda from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, gives directions to her remote home by telling people to turn left after the whoopsy-daisy, her term for a sudden dip in the road. There are quite a few colloquial expressions for such abrupt depression or bump in the pavement, including thank-you-ma’am, yes-ma’am, and how-do-you-do, all suggesting the nodding motion of a passenger’s head when going over it. Other terms are dippity-do, dipsy-do, belly-tickler, duck-and-dip, and whoop-de-doo. In the Ozarks, these spots are sometimes called kiss-me-quicks and love holes because of the opportunity they afford for a quick smooch. 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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