Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a take-off puzzle this week, offering clues to rhyming two-word phrases made by removing the letter D from the beginning of one of them. For example, if your sound equipment was damaged in a flood, what are you left with? http://waywordradio.org via Pocket https://ift.tt/2FrwOea
Archive for April, 2018
After the death of theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, @tommysantelli tweeted a powerful reminder about the language we use to describe someone who uses a wheelchair. http://waywordradio.org via Pocket https://ift.tt/2FrwKeq
A chance encounter with University of California San Diego professor of history Mark Hanna, author of Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire, 1570-1740, leads to a discussion of how the saying Arrr! came to be associated with pirates. via Pocket https://ift.tt/2Kqbv03
The Latin phrase mens sana in corpore sano, or “a healthy mind in a healthy body,” comes from one of the Satires of the ancient Roman poet Juvenal. Fast-forward to 1977, when the Japanese manufacturer of athletic footwear was looking for a name for his new product. via Pocket https://ift.tt/2Kqbr0j
Honeypots is a children’s game in which players sit or squat with their hands gripping the backs of their thighs, while other players lift them up by the armpits and shake or swing them in an attempt to make them lose their grip. What fun! http://waywordradio.org via Pocket https://ift.tt/2KqboSb
On Twitter @flaminghaystack asks: What if the person who named walkie talkies named everything? For starters, we might refer to a defibrillator as a hearty starty and stamps as licky stickies. http://waywordradio.org via Pocket https://ift.tt/2FrwFHE
Do not confine your children to your own learning, for they were born in another time. This may be a Jewish proverb, although its provenance is uncertain. In any case, it’s a reminder that while young people still have much to learn, they also know things their elders don’t. http://waywordradio. via Pocket https://ift.tt/2Fscuct
Food that fell on the floor that you go ahead and eat anyway? That’s a floorio. http://waywordradio.org via Pocket https://ift.tt/2KoJmqq
The Yiddish phrase Hak mir nisht keyn tshaynik and its variants have been used to tell someone to stop babbling or making noise. Literally, it means Don’t knock me a teakettle. http://waywordradio.org via Pocket https://ift.tt/2KovBaT
A ninth-grade English teacher in Canfield, Ohio, says that when her class reached the climactic scene in The Odyssey where Odysseus bends his mighty bow and kills his wife’s suitors, a student wondered whether the correct phrase is shoot a bow or shoot an arrow. The latter is far more common. via Pocket https://ift.tt/2FsyfIZ