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…
Getting caught in a spider web…walking through an abandoned warehouse…getting caught in a spider web while walking through an abandoned warehouse…those might make you feel uneasy, scared, or otherwise upset. Some would call that a case of “the willies”. But what are “the willies”? Who, or what, were they named after? And how did they…
Most of our greetings & farewells are pretty straightforward, especially ones that begin with good (like “good morning”, “good afternoon”, “good night”, etc.). But what about “goodbye”? Are you basically saying, “I hope you have a good bye”? What is a “bye”? Is it some old word once used to reference a certain time of…
Why is February spelled weird? We have a plethora of oddly spelled words in the English language, but February is pretty much the only of our calendar months to be classified as oddly-spelled. Why is that? Well, like the eleven other, more intuitively spelled months, we have Latin to thank (or blame, as the case…
As we prepare to “ring in” the New Year with all sorts of revelries, like toasts, kisses, New Year’s resolutions, movie marathons, and more…have you ever wondered why none of those things ring? So why do say we’re going to “ring in” the New Year? Back when the phrase first originated, it actually involved things…
Asking for a pancake or a flapjack could leave you with a very different food item, depending on where you are.
Ever heard the phrase, “Bah! Humbug!” around Christmastime & wonder what it means? The most famous examples of the phrase come from Charles Dickens’s timeless 1843 tale, A Christmas Carol, in which the curmudgeonly Ebenezer Scrooge regularly proclaims “Bah! Humbug!” when referring to Christmas. Since Scrooge particularly hates the otherwise happy holiday, it’s easy to…