If your last name is Cook or Smith, your ancestors probably worked in those professions. But what if your last name is Pope? Or Abbott? And if you have enough food for Coxey’s army, you have more than enough to go around. The phrase refers to...
In English, you might describe something easy to do as a cinch or a piece of cake. Several other languages employ tasty metaphors to convey a similar idea. In Brazilian Portuguese, you something easy can be described with an idiom that translates as...
Depending on its mood, a turkey’s skin can shift from red to blue to white, due to changes in the blood vessels between bundles of collagen. That phenomenon is reflected in the Japanese term for “turkey,” shichimencho (七面鳥), which...
Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield set in today’s Appalachia. Martha shares memories of a long-ago visit to Kingsolver’s family farm in Virginia, where they...
The Spanish idiom del año del caldo describes something exceedingly old. Literally translating as “from the year of the broth,” it suggests the idea that something is “as old as the year soup was invented.” Someone said to be...
It’s cats and dogs, and a few other critters, too. Animals prowl around inside several English words, including sleuth, which was originally sleuth-hound, a synonym for bloodhound. Plus, the language we use with our pets and the ways they...