It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Stacy from Denver, Colorado, is accustomed to using the idiomatic expression let alone in a particular way, mentioning two possibilities within a range and placing the more extreme possibility at the end of the statement, as in I can’t even...
The splendid new Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Bookshop|Amazon), edited by Michael Montgomery and Jennifer Heinmiller, is a greatly expanded version of the Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (Amazon), edited by Montgomery and Joseph...
An ornithologist says there’s a growing movement to change the name of a pink-footed bird currently called the flesh-footed shearwater. The movement reflects a growing understanding that using flesh-colored for “pink” fails to...
cee-lo n.—Gloss: A type of the dice game craps. «He says the game pads his income substantially—he said he won $1,000 playing cee-lo in July alone. The game, played with a trio of dice for stakes that can range from a few dollars to a few...
It’s raining, it’s pouring, but the sun is still shining. Quick—what do you call that? Some folks refer to it a sunshower, and others call it a monkey’s wedding. But a woman says her Southern-born mother used a much more unnerving...