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Too Much Sugar for a Dime

Tammy in Atlanta, Georgia, says her father-in-law often uses the expression That’s too much sugar for a dime, suggesting that something is more trouble than it’s worth. Variations include too much sugar for a cent, too much sugar for a...

Drop a Dime on Someone

Mark in Scranton, Pennsylvania, calls about a phrase he heard on an old detective show: drop a dime. It means “to inform on someone” or “tip off the police,” and comes from the practice of literally dropping a dime into a...

Episode 1447

XYZ PDQ

How often do you hear the words campaign and political in the same breath? Oddly enough, 19th-century grammarians railed against using campaign to mean “an electoral contest.” Martha and Grant discuss why. And, lost in translation: a...

Examine Your Zipper

The slang phrase XYZ, meaning “examine your zipper,” has been used since at least the 1960’s as a subtle tipoff to let someone know his zipper is down. A variant, XYZ PDQ, means “examine your zipper pretty darn quick.”...

Bingo Fuel

“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first...

Promising a Yankee Dime

It’s common for Southern moms to promise their children a Yankee dime if they complete a chore. The thing is a Yankee dime is a motherly kiss — much less exciting than an actual dime. It’s a phrase that plays on Yankee thrift, and...

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