Andrew from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, recalls a phrase his grandmother used: You’ve got to eat a peck of dirt before you die. A peck is a unit of dry measure equal to a quarter of a bushel. Peck is also a term of approximate measure, as in to...
triple n.— «There is so much hugging at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, N.J., that students have broken down the hugs by type: […] There’s the shake and lean; the hug from behind; and, the newest addition, the triple —...
bear claw n.— «There is so much hugging at Pascack Hills High School in Montvale, N.J., that students have broken down the hugs by type: There is the basic friend hug, probably the most popular, and the bear hug, of course. But now there...
This week, we’re going through the e-mail bag. Here’s a savory, sensuous one. It’s from Stacey in Boulder, Colorado.
bunny hug n.— «It shares its name with a dance move from 1912, and was once also called a “cotton popover” and a “kangaroo sweatshirt.” What the majority of the English-speaking world refers to as the hooded...
bear hug n.— «It also included several dozen mentions of an unlikely introduction into the vernacular of white-collar crime: “Bear hug.” Fastow used the term to describe the promises Skilling made him that Enron would buy back...