![]() ![]() Get the Goody OutĪmelia in Arlington, Virginia, was surprised to hear her wife, who is from Iowa, use the phrase getting the goody out to describe someone sporting a well-worn pair of sweatpants, indicating that they were continuing to get the most out of that raggedy piece of clothing. Let’s hope that’s the case, because pepper alley is actually 19th-century boxing slang for being peppered with punches, but also possibly a reference to London’s Pepper Alley, notorious for brawls and debauchery. Pepper AlleyĪ kindergartener misunderstands the name of an event at his school, insisting to his mother that he attended a pepper alley, not a pep rally. Does anyone else call a grocery store a food store? Based on research from the Linguistic Atlas Project, plus anecdotal evidence in response to her question on our Facebook group, it’s clear that food store is used more often by people from the East Coast of the United States down to the Gulf of Mexico. Polly from Issaquah, Washington, grew up in Washington, D.C., where she and her family used the term food store to mean “grocery store.” However, a friend from the Midwest teases her about this. Where Do People Call a Grocery Store a “Food Store”? A few years later, she wrote an essay in The New York Times with advice for writers and artists, calling on them to observe the world attentively and write with urgency. In 1975, Annie Dillard won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-fiction for her book Pilgrim at Tinker Creek ( Amazon| Bookshop). ![]() Q: “Could I Be A Writer?” A: “Do You Like Sentences?” You look like the hind wheels of destruction means “You look terrible!” An earlier version is the hind wheels of bad luck. Similarly, the blue fires of hell intensifies the expression the fires of hell. Sometimes the word blue serves as an intensifier, as in true blue, meaning “steadfastly loyal” and blue streak, which, when used in reference to cursing, suggests a large quantity of coarse language. Ian in Clyde, North Carolina, is puzzled when a colleague uses the term blue million, meaning “a large amount.” Along with words like zillion and gazillion, this expression functions as an indefinite hyperbolic numeral. If you need a way to urge someone to butt out of your business or stop telling you how to do something, you can always retort, I’m the one milking this duck! A Blue Million The phrase is a reference to rolling a die, but does that kind of die have anything to do with modern-day metallurgy and in which one casts a die? I’m the One Milking This Duck! When Julius Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon River and march against his rival in Rome, he supposedly said Alea jacta est, or “The die is cast,” indicating that at that point, there was no going back. For example, which team’s name might refer either to a type of weather phenomenon or a wooden roller coaster on the Coney Island boardwalk? Is a Gaming “Die” Etymologically Related to a Metalworking “Die”? Quiz Guy John Chaneski pitches a puzzle about the names of minor-league baseball teams. In Leonardo da Vinci, biographer Walter Isaacson notes that da Vinci was fond of riddles, including this one: Winged creatures will support people with their feathers. ![]() In Old French, lourche means “deceived,” “embarrassed,” “trapped,” or “duped,” and also came to mean “a place where hunters lie in wait.” Da Vinci Riddle It probably derives from an old game similar to backgammon called lourche, the object of which is to one’s opponent behind on the board, or in other words, to leave them in the lurch. This left him wondering about the phrase left in the lurch. How Long is a Bride a Bride?Ĭandace from Berea, Kentucky, got married a few weeks ago and wonders: At what point does a person start being a bride? When, if ever, do they stop being a bride? Left in the LurchĪ restaurant manager in Kokomo, Indiana, had an employee who failed to show up for work. For a while, the Jaguar company, which is based in the UK, instead called it the froot, a combination of front and boot. Automotive engineers refer to this part of the vehicle as the frunk, a portmanteau of front and trunk. In an electric car, the trunk is in the front, not the back. ![]()
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