Jessica in Indianapolis, Indiana, says her field of software development, rubber duck applies to a situation where you describe a problem you’re struggling with to someone else, and in the process of explaining it, you hit upon the solution, without any feedback from the listener — a conclusion you would also have reached if you’d simply taken the time to explain it simply to an animate object. This strategy of rubber duck programming was first recorded in a book called The Pragmatic Programmer (Bookshop|Amazon) by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt. Jessica reports that in her office, they also use the term cardboard dog in a similar way. This bit of developer slang appears to have been coined by Texas programmer Stephen J. Baker. This is part of a complete episode.
Inkhorn terms are bloated, fancy, show-off words formed by cramming Latin and Greek roots into English. The name references little bottles made from animal horn that 14th-century English scribes used to carry their ink. Lexicographer Henry...
Kylie Ryan, an elementary-school teacher in Seattle, Washington, remembers that when she played hide-and-seek as a child, the call for everyone to come in was alle alle oxen free. Are there other versions? Yes, and because these sayings were not...
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