Jennifer in Andrews, South Carolina, is curious about the term case quarter, meaning “a single 25-cent coin — not two dimes and a nickel and not five nickels.” It’s heard mainly in South Carolina, particularly among African...
The lingo of metal detectorists is full of colorful terms: A coinball is a clot of earth with a coin in it, a nighthawk is someone who detects without a permit under cover of darkness, a gold dance is a gleeful jig upon discovering precious metal...
Mike calls from Bloomsberg, Pennsylvania to ask about the word picayune, meaning “petty.” Why would a New Orleans newspaper call itself The Times-Picayune? The adjective picayune, meaning “trifling” or...
The city of Portland, Oregon, where Martha and Grant recently took their live show, owes its name to a coin toss. The city’s founders, Asa Lovejoy of Boston, Massachusetts, and Frances Pettygrove of Portland, Maine, each wanted to name it for...
An old version of the heads or tails coin toss is cross or pile or cross and pile. That’s because an old English coin was marked with a cross on one side and pile meant the back of a coin. This is part of a complete episode.
Before the search engine Google, there was the word googol. As mathematician Edward Kasner recounts in his book Mathematics and the Imagination, he asked his 9-year-old nephew Milton to coin a word for a huge number, specifically 10 to the 100th...