After our conversation about cutting donuts, spinning cookies, and other terms for gunning a car’s engine to make the vehicle spin in a circle, preferably on a gravel surface, a Chicago listener points out that in his hometown, this practice is...
How colors got their names, and a strange way to write. The terms blue and orange arrived in English via French, so why didn’t we also adapt the French for black and white? • Not every example of writing goes in one direction across the page...
What do you say if you have guests over and someone in your family has stray food left on the face? In some households, the secret warning is “there’s a gazelle on the lawn.” But why a gazelle? Also, this week: the term for a party...
A listener in Washington, D.C., says that his parents taught him that when guests were over for dinner and a family member had specks of food on his face, the polite way to surreptitiously nudge him into wiping it off was to say, “Look...
mowing the lawn n.— «Maritime patrol planes fly a grid pattern over the search area, guided by GPS. They fly in parallel swaths over the ocean, in a process that pilots refer to as “mowing the lawn.” Flying at an altitude of...
slow gardening n.— «The mix of shrubs and flowers Mr. Rushing planted instead of a traditional lawn is an example of his “Slow Gardening” approach. The term takes its name and inspiration from the Slow Food movement, whose adherents...