Whenever someone’s sharing some juicy details with you about something of questionable veracity, but they want to try & be cagey about where they got their information, sometimes they’ll say they “heard it through the grapevine.” They might say, “I heard through the grapevine John & Sarah are getting divorced,” or, “I heard through the…
Pretty much everyone has heard of the expression “86”, which means to do away with something (like, “Yeah, 86 that order!”). But where did it come from & why? Well, there are a few schools of thought as to its origin, though none of them are actually official. Some possibilities… The restaurant business in the…
I’ve always been fascinated by the audio that comes from a plane’s cockpit. But have you ever wondered…“Why is it called a ‘cockpit’ in the first place?” In aviation terms, the cockpit is the control center from which the pilot directs the functions & flight path of an aircraft. Commercial planes have them, as do…
Some folks might be able to pull off a Scottish accent every now & then whenever they try to quote something from Braveheart. But is it possible for someone to ever truly lose his or her native accent & replace it with a new one? Actually…no. The way you speak now will most likely going…
Christmastime…the time of year when everyone seems to be busy buying, wrapping, and giving items to people that we’d like for them to have. What are they called again? Gifts! Or…is it presents? Is there even really a difference between “gifts” & “presents”? Each word arose from a different language family. “Gift” was derived from…
Yesterday marked the start of a new season. But which one? Was it the beginning of Fall? Or the start of Autumn? Which is correct (or, at worst, most correct)? What you call the season we’re now in actually depends on where in the world you’re from and/or whom you ask. In The United Kingdom,…
The news is regularly filled with reports of murders & missing persons cases involving unknown person. And that unknown person is usually referred to as “John Doe”. But why? Why do we call unidentified people John Doe until their real identity is established? This all comes from a weird, no-longer-in-use British legal procedure called an…
Catching a ride on the back of a pig isn’t really a thing, right? And yet, people love horsing around & giving others what are called “piggyback rides”. But why are they called “piggyback rides”? I mean, people walk on two feet, right? Pigs, on the other hand, hoof it on four. What gives? Where…
Thanks to the intricacies of our amazing English language, one thing is all but guaranteed: more often than not, we’re all going to mispronounce a word (or twelve). Because of the complexity of American English, how a word is spelled doesn’t always exactly indicate how it’s supposed to sound. And that can cause some embarrassment…
It’s Springtime again! And that means it’s time for “spring cleaning”, in the hopes of making your home, car, office, etc., look super clean & like new. Your goal should be to make your place look “spick & span”, you might say. But what does that even really mean, “spick & span”? The full phrase…