soccer
I wasn't planning to run an item today, it being my birthday, but then I learned my favorite bit of etymology in ages: It turns out that "soccer" was originally...
reductio ad Hitlerum
I'm certainly familiar with the concept, but I hadn't previously encountered the phrase reductio ad Hitlerum, a phrase coined in 1950 by U of Chicago professor Leo Strauss to refer...
fugacity
I had heard of the band Fugazi, but I didn't know their name derived from a Vietnam acronym: "Fucked Up, Got Ambushed, Zipped In." Only really, as it turns out,...
Pandora’s malware
I was amused by the following somewhat overextended metaphor. ("RFID" refers to Radio Frequency ID chips.) "RFID malware is a Pandora's box that has been gathering dust in the corner...
blende, a.k.a. sphalerite
I first encountered the term "pitchblende" when I was a kid, probably in some old science fiction book or other. I knew it had to do with uranium, but wasn't...
retting
To "ret" is to soak plant material (flax, jute, hemp, kenaf, etc) to loosen the fibers. Wikipedia notes that you can also ret by leaving the crop in the fields,...
gunnysack
I've known the word "gunnysack" (for a burlap bag) since I was a kid, but it was only a few days ago that it finally occurred to me to wonder...
shake of the whip
I've heard "fair shake" before, but hadn't heard it connected to whips: No film-maker ever got a better shake of the whip than I did. --Robert Altman, quoted in a...
bitten by backdoors
Block that metaphor! This just in (a couple weeks ago, when I forgot to post it) from the National Weather Service forecast (which always uses all-caps): A MODERATION TREND IS...
ostinato
An "ostinato" is (according to Wikipedia) a musical phrase that's played or sung repeatedly at the same pitch. (Found this word in the Wikipedia entry for "dhikr.")...