All aboard! Cap’n John, a.k.a. as Quiz Guy John Chaneski, invites you on a series of rhyming cruises. Just as a booze cruise features lots of alcoholic beverages, John’s excursions have themes that also rhyme with the word cruise. For...
Nell from Virginia Beach, Virginia, remembers her great-grandfather and her grandmother using the phrase as clean as seven watersto mean “spotlessly clean.” The word waters in this case is analogous to washes or rinses, so being cleaned...
An article in a 1906 edition of the Minneapolis Journal carried the inviting headline: Noisy Hungry Frogs Sadden Farmer’s Life: They Scare His Cattle and They Also Eat His Flannel Shirt. This is part of a complete episode.
The term sticky wicket, meaning “a difficult situation” comes from the game of cricket. When wet, the grassy playing field known called the wicket will cause the ball to bounce erratically, creating an unpredictable, challenging surface...
The word mocktail refers to a carefully crafted non-alcoholic drink. A listener feels that such beverages should have a more positive name that doesn’t refer to what they lack. Is there a better term for these concoctions? Do you have a better...
In 1803, a shy British pharmacist wrote a pamphlet that made him a reluctant celebrity. The reason? He proposed a revolutionary new system for classifying clouds — with Latin names we still use today, like cumulus, cirrus, and stratus. Also: when...