In this episode: How colors got their names, and a strange way to write. The terms blue and orange arrived in English via French, so why didn’t we also adapt the French for black and white? • Not every example of writing goes in one direction...
Joan grew up in Yorkshire, England, then moved to New Orleans, Louisiana. There she was surprised to hear some people use the term evening instead of afternoon to refer to “the period between noon and 5 p.m.” The word evening is used...
Why do we refer to “testing or going beyond limits” as pushing the envelope? In aeronautics, to push the envelope means to try to go past the edge of the aircraft’s perceived capability. In the 1980s, the phrase was popularized by...
Tom, a medical student in Minneapolis, Minnesota, says surgeons and emergency medical personnel compliment each other with the phrase strong work on that. The congratulatory expression strong work seems largely confined to medicine, though. Another...
Tom in Tallahassee, Florida, wonders why he and his fellow buddies called the store on a ship the gedunk, also geedunk, and also applied the word to the sweets and other goodies they purchased there. As Paul Dickson notes in his book War Slang, some...
If you want someone to calm down, you might say “Cool your jets!” This expression is among several catchphrases from a 1950s TV show about the extraterrestrial adventures of Tom Corbett, Space Cadet. Others include plug your jets...