Josh in Binghamton, New York, wonders about the slang term beefed it, meaning to “took a hard fall.” It’s probably connected to biff, often used in snowboarding and mountain biking, meaning “to fail” or do badly.”...
H. Auden’s poem “As I Walked Out One Evening” contains some lovely examples of the rhetorical device called adynaton, which are impossible things, including: I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love you / Till China and Africa...
In colonial times, a sugarloaf was refined sugar molded into a cone. The term sugarloaf later extended to a mountain that resembled one. This is part of a complete episode.
When David from Warren County, Indiana, visited relatives in Virginia, he heard about an inebriated man who was said to have entered a church and caused a ruckus while sworpin’ down the aisle. In Appalachia, the verb sworp, also spelled swarp...
J-hopping n.— «To jump a pair of foot-high tree roots spanning a trail in Woodland Park, mountain bike instructor Simon Lawton uses a technique called J-hopping which, like the Ollie skateboard move, is something I still can’t get my head...
windlip n.—Gloss: a snowdrift created by the wind in a high place. «“In Fairbanks there wasn’t any parks or jumps, so you just learned to hit whatever you had—natural hits, lips, windlips.”…Bell and Hebert link the tricks they...