Micah in Council Bluffs, Iowa, reports reading an account of a fistfight between 19th-century newspaper editors in which one was hit with a sockdolager, meaning “a knockout punch” or a “heavy, decisive blow,” and wonders if that’s the source of sock, meaning to “strike hard.” Actually, sockdolager is probably an elaboration of sock. In Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Bookshop|Amazon), Mark Twain uses sockdolager to denote a clap of thunder. The word sockdolagizing is one of the last words heard by Abraham Lincoln, because it’s part of the play Our American Cousin by Tom Taylor (Bookshop|Amazon), which he was watching when he was assassinated. This is part of a complete episode.
After an international team of scientists and staffers spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, their accents changed ever so slightly, according to an acoustic analysis by German researchers. The slang terms they shared include dingle...
Is the booty as in shake your booty related to a pirate’s booty? The booty that means “derriere” is an alteration of botty, which is itself an alteration of bottom. The booty that means “loot” or “plunder”...
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