What’s the difference between speak your piece and speak now or forever hold your peace? While speaking your piece refers to a piece of information you want to share. Holding your peace relates to keeping the peace. This is a simple case of a...
For years, teachers have warned against using the word ain’t, apparently with some success. Emily Hummell from Boston sent us a poem that may have contributed: “Don’t say ain’t / your mother will faint / your father will fall...
Have you heard the latest scuttlebutt around the water cooler? This term for gossip, which comes from the water-filled cask in a ship, is a literal synonym for water-cooler talk! This is part of a complete episode.
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Our Puzzle Maestro John Chaneski has a great variation of his classic Tom Swifty game, based on adjectives that fit their subjects. For example, how did the citizens feel upon hearing that the dictator of their small country shut down the newspapers...
Does capitalizing the pronoun I feel like aggrandizing your own self-importance? Timna, an English Composition professor at an Illinois community college, reports that a student refused to capitalize this first person pronoun, arguing that to do so...