O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms! A listener senses something awfully good about oxymorons, from the Greek for “pointedly foolish.” Grant shares this favorite example from Shakespeare’s Romeo...
Puzzle Guy Greg Pliska presents a puzzle about William Snakespeare—you know, the great playwright whose works are just one letter different from those of his better-known fellow writer, William Shakespeare. It was Snakespeare, for example, who wrote...
catch a charge v. phr.— «When a girl is on the street and she sees a pimp on the sidewalk, she has to get off the sidewalk, into the street, and not make eye contact with him or talk to him. Otherwise, she is “out of pocket” and has...
bottom bitch n.— «That winter, Romeo took Lucilia to the track, to bachelor parties, and to clubs—including Club Kalua, which would be the scene of the Sean Bell shooting almost three years later—where she drank to get up her nerve to...
track n.— «He had sex with her, and the next night took her to the “track” on Rockaway Boulevard, where she turned her first trick.…That winter, Romeo took Lucilia to the track, to bachelor parties, and to clubs.…A week later...
beermuda triangle n.— «One reason Johnson believes his numbers remain high is because of his location, in what some patrons call the “Barmuda Triangle” or “Beermuda Triangle.” That’s the nickname some have given to...