Why is a mischievous child sometimes called a corker? A cork is the final word, the thing that ends a party when you put it back in the bottle, and put a cork in it means “stop talking.” In baseball, a corker is a ball struck powerfully...
In nautical parlance, if you slacken a rope by pulling in the opposite direction to separate the blocks in a block-and-tackle system, you’re said to overhaul it — the inspiration for the more general term that means to “change...
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.”...
Paul from Omaha, Nebraska, says as a result of watching the College World Series in that city, he and his son wondered when sports announcers started using the word cheese to describe a pitcher’s fastball, and such variants as throwing cheese...
After our conversation about helicopter parents, who hover closely over their children, and the Danish term curling foraeldre, or “curling parents,” who sweep away problems ahead of their children, much like people sweeping the ice in...
Baseball slang collected during the 1930s includes fishing trip for “taking a swing at a bad ball,” pour the pine for “to hit a good ball solidly,” and the derisive term collisions for “college players,”, that is...