When Julius Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon River and march against his rival in Rome, he supposedly said Alea jacta est, or “The die is cast,” indicating that at that point, there was no going back. The phrase is a reference to...
Hi, all — We’re back after a brief summer hiatus. So much to catch up on! In last weekend’s archive edition, we discussed “interrobangs,” “pronequarks,” “catios,” “horse dumplings,”...
English is full of unusual terms, both old (eleemosynary, favonian) and new (flyaway, catio). Also, the Swahili term that means “sleep like a log,” the multiple meanings of the word joint, cowpies and horse biscuits, what it means to...
The Swahili phrase nililala fofofo means “to sleep really well.” Literally, though, it translates as “to sleep like a log.” Are the English and Swahili idioms related? This is part of a complete episode.
Ciao! In this week's archive episode: If your family has guests over, how do you warn each other if one of you has a stray crumb on the face? Some families do so with the surreptitious code phrase, "There's a gazelle on the lawn."...
Many of the world’s languages apparently derived from a prehistoric common ancestor known as Indo-European. But since no one ever wrote down a word of it, how do we know what it was like?