What do you call the cardboard sleeve that goes over a paper cup to keep your hand from getting too hot? A San Antonio, Texas, listener knows that the technical term for this sleeve is zarf, a word that comes from Arabic, originally denoting an...
In sports slang, a horse-collar is “a score of zero,” and to horse-collar an opponent is “to hold them scoreless.” This is part of a complete episode.
In nautical lore, Fiddler’s Green is the mythical place where dead mariners go to enjoy a life of leisure, with plenty of song, dancing, flirting, and rum. It may be tempting to connect this expression with mariners’ term fid, or a...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a take-off puzzle this week, offering clues to rhyming two-word phrases made by removing the letter D from the beginning of one of them. For example, if your sound equipment was damaged in a flood, what are you left with...
A woman in Hemet, California, wonders about plumb crazy, as in totally, completely crazy. The plumb in this case has to do with a plumb line, a line often weighted with lead to determine verticality. This plumb derives from Latin word for the...
The piece of playground equipment you slide down goes by several different names, depending on which part of the U.S. you’re from: slide, sliding board, sliding plank, and sliding pond. This is part of a complete episode.