Thanks to the absurd overemphasis in the news of even the most insignificant fluctuations in “the stock market” (there’s not really “the stock market;” there are lots and lots of them), most people have heard about both a “bull market” and a “bear market.” Sometimes the terms are about the traders themselves, and whether they’re Continue reading

Different eras have different conceptions of social class. Nowadays it’s mostly about money, although there are some subtle variations based on how you obtained your money, what you spend it on, and whether you hang out with celebrities — and if you do, just what sort of celebrities they are; movie stars, musical performers, business Continue reading

In France, the characteristics of the regional environment where a food or wine is produced has a word: “terrior.” It’s not just the region, climate, soil, and topography, but the flavor and related characteristics of the food as well. The word “terroir” comes from the Latin word “territorium,” which is also the source of ‘territory.’  Continue reading

From the roaring twenties to at least the 1960s, a common trope in the US was to declare  “cocktail hour,” which was usually about five pm. It was also pretty common for the average home to include some of the gadgets and accessories for making “cocktails:” pitchers, shakers, various measuring cups, stirrers, and the like. Continue reading

The message for to-day (which is the way “today” used to be written) is about hyphens. Using hyphens is a bit of a black art in English, and people have written many e-mails to publications criticizing this or that bit of hyphenation. There aren’t any rules. Or, really, there are rules, but they’re often contradictory. Continue reading

When you’re feeling “in the pink”, that means you’re in excellent health and feeling fine. In his 1923 novel Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse used it this way:  “‘I am in excellent health, I thank you. And you?’ ‘In the pink. Just been over to America.’”  The first one to use “pink” in this sense was Continue reading

In 1931, the Commission internationale de l’éclairage (International Commission on Illumination or “CIE”), created the CIE 1931 XYZ Color Space. It’s a way of plotting colors by their wavelengths in the visible (to humans) spectrum, and is still in use as the basis for describing (and matching) specific colors when you’re working with, say, ink, Continue reading

In many books — the old kind, actually printed in real ink on real paper — there’s a page near the end that tells you some things about the book itself. Sometimes it lists the typefaces used, occasionally the paper, and maybe even some of the people involved in creating the book, such as the Continue reading