The words drift and drive both come from the same Germanic root that means “to push along.” By the 16th century, the English word drift had come to mean “something that a person is driving at,” or in other words, their purpose or intent. The phrase...
Julie in Fort Pierce, Florida, recalls that on sweltering days her mother would declare the weather was hotter than Billy Blue Blazes! The word blazes is a euphemism for “hell,” as in hot as blazes. The blue in blue blazes has long been used as an...
Information technology specialists have clever lingo referring to computer users who come to them all worked up about a problem, only to discover that it’s a matter of an error on the part of the user, not the computer. In the tech world, that’s...
Following our conversation about unusual ways to answer the phone, listeners share several others: One guy answers with animal noises, another responds, “Hello, you’re on the air,” and a third simply greets callers with the “On the phone.” This is...
For this week’s puzzle, Quiz Guy John Chaneski has been swapping out a single letter within each of three words in a category. Suppose, for example, the category is fruit. What three fruits might you produce by changing just one letter in each of...
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a word-pecker is “a person who trifles or plays with, or quibbles over, words.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Word-Peckers” I always love it when I’m looking through...
