Private Voices, also known as the Corpus of American Civil War Letters, is an online archive of thousands of letters written by soldiers during the U.S. Civil War. Because the soldiers lacked formal education and wrote “by ear,” the...
The words we choose can change attitudes — and change lives. A swing-dance instructor has switched to gender-neutral language when teaching couples. He says that using words like “leader” and “follower” actually works better...
A Huntsville, Alabama, man finds that his younger co-workers have never heard the phrase going to hell in a handbasket. Although the expression is at least as old as the U.S. Civil War, its etymology remains unclear. In the early 1960s, the humorist...
A U.S. Forest Service firefighter in Lakeland, Florida, also teaches classes on chainsaw safety, and wants to make sure he’s using gender-neutral pronouns when doing so. The epicene pronoun they will work just fine. This is part of a complete...
Some people, particularly younger folks, are adamant that the term belligerent means “drunk.” It’s a misanalysis of the word, perhaps associating being intoxicated with being ready to fight. Instead, belligerent derives from the...
To cut a chogi, also spelled choagy or chogie, is an English slang term meaning “Let’s get out of here.” It probably stems from Korean: cheogi or jeogi means “there” (it’s opposite, yeogi, means...