Sometimes you’ll see a story about some person or group “barnstorming”, which means touring around an area — possibly the whole US — making brief stops for whatever their specialty happens to be. A band could hold a barnstorming concert tour; a political candidate could barnstorm around giving speeches, and so forth.  If you look Continue reading

“She was in cahoots with a doctor.” That’s a line from “Murder Must Wait,” a 1953 detective novel. It’s a pretty typical line; I don’t know how many novels in the crime fiction genre include “…in cahoots with…” but I bet it’s in the hundreds, at least. Being “in cahoots” with somebody means partnering with them, with Continue reading

If you’re anything like Shakespeare, (and come on, you know you are!) you occasionally have the need to fling an epithet at someone. And here’s a good one. Shakespeare used it in “As You Like It.” When you use it, you’re calling someone immoral, vile, heinous, highly criminal, very wicked. The word is somewhat obscure, Continue reading

There’s a lot of talk about “dashboards” in the business world today. Everybody wants a “dashboard” presenting a summary of relevant information. Some software products are, to users, dashboards. The ready analogy, of course, is to the dashboard in an automobile, although it should also be noted that as manufacturers switched from analog gauges to Continue reading

“Pale” isn’t an exact synonym for “white”, as in “white picket fence”, but it’s pretty close. And as everybody who’s grown up in or even visited suburban areas in the US, a “picket fence” is a pretty standard thing to have around the front yards there, and nearly all of them are painted white. But Continue reading

Imagine you want to build a clock, but annoyingly enough, you find yourself stuck several centuries in the past, and you don’t really know how to start. The first thing you need is something that “ticks” in a reliably steady cadence. Enter the pendulum. Pendulums swing back and forth pretty steadily. Pendulums started being used Continue reading

It’s high time to review some words in the “obsolete” pile to see if we should bring them back and start using them again.   Here’s a word we should resurrect: teterrimous. Back in the 1700s and 1800s when it was in use it meant “most foul”, as in “beware the teterrimous monster living in Continue reading

“Again” is a word that comes up…well, again and again in conversation. It’s been around for a very long time; at least since Old English. But its meaning contains a surprising little twist.  What you probably think of when you use “again” is repetition; you did something once, and if you do the same thing Continue reading

Word of the day: refrain When an over-played, clichéd song is played yet again, particularly when it cycles around to the tired refrain, unless you’re with a particularly refrained group of people, someone is sure to utter the refrain “how many times do we have to listen to this tune?”  “Refrain” is not exactly a Continue reading

Sir Arnold Lunn was a writer who seems to have been better known as a skier. He was knighted for his skiing, but not his authorship. He lived from 1888 to 1974, and there’s a monument to him in Mürren, Switzerland where he organized the first world skiing championship in 1931. His father introduced him Continue reading