You may have a favorite word in English, but what about your favorite in another language? The Spanish term ojalá is especially handy for expressing hopefulness and derives from Arabic for “God willing.” In Trinidad, if you want to ask...
Deanna from Whitefish, Montana, has a dispute with her husband over the definition of potpie. She says it’s a type of soup with dumplings; he says it can’t be called a pie if it doesn’t have a crust. There is such a thing as a pot...
The Italian phrase Non si frigge mica con l’acqua literally translates as “We don’t fry with water around here,” and means that the speaker doesn’t do things halfway. Quite a few other Italian idioms involve food. One...
Our conversation about Spanish idioms involving food prompted a tweet from Tijuana, Mexico: del plato a la boca, se cae la sopa, or between the dish and the mouth, the soup spills, or don’t count your chickens before they hatch. A similar idea is...
“Save your breath to cool your soup” is centuries old, including variants with porridge, pottage, broth, and other things. In all those cases, it’s a wry way to tell someone to be less long-winded. This is part of a complete...
Creative communication in a noisy world! Writing a clever 140-character tweet isn’t easy. But you know what’s even more impressive? Working all 26 letters of the alphabet into just one sentence! The term for that type of sentence is...