While vacationing on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, a listener encountered an Australian who used the term skylarking to mean “horsing around.” The verb to skylark goes back hundreds of years and once referred to racing through the...
Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the...
Tim is a rancher, dogsledder, and a former commercial fisherman in Alaska. He’s observed that the words rope and line are used differently in each of those professions depending on context, and using them incorrectly can mark a person as a...
So you’ve long dreamed of writing fiction, but don’t know where to begin? There are lots of ways to get started — creative writing classes, local writing groups, and books with prompts to get you going. The key is to get started, and...
Sister Patricia Marie in San Antonio, Texas, wonders why we use three sheets to the wind to describe someone who is inebriated. In nautical terminology, some of the ropes, or lines, attached to the corner of a sail are called sheets. If three of...
After hanging out with San Diego sailing enthusiasts, Martha picked up several bits of slang and jargon. Catenary describes the desirable curve of an anchor chain, from Latin catena, meaning “chain.” A chain that is not pulled up...