Was This The Worst Idea Of The 1970s?

by Kevin Burton    Pet rocks I remember. Mood rings, yep. Little sawed-off Gremlin cars. Yeah, I remember those.     I was part of the 70s. I was on the scene baby! I watched the Jackson 5 cartoon. Didn’t dance much but I sang a lot of disco. I remember the bicentennial and staying up …

Stories Behind Sayings Involving The Moon

by Dictionary Scoop    The moon has been a source of inspiration for poems, stories, and songs since ancestral times, its image recurring in our language as a symbol of beauty, grandeur, and ambition.    Today we explore some well-known and some more obscure idioms. 1-Once in a Blue Moon    We all know that this phrase …

Power Slanguage Of A Groovy Generation

by Dictionary Scoop    The 60s were truly a magical time, weren’t they?    If there’s one word that truly defined this decade, it would be the word “freedom”: After all, the 60s were defined by their revolutionary new takes on music, art, and society in general.     In fact, this era was so groundbreaking that …

God Bless Them, Cats Are People Too

by Kevin Burton   The omnivore and the acrobat inhabit the same spaces, but not the same mind.    Their motivations differ. Their capabilities and culpabilities are diverse. Sometimes I’d like to see these felonious felines get their tails in jail. My wife Jeannette agrees.    Who knocked over the framed beep baseball picture that …

Sharp-Dressed Words From Fashion Industry

by Dictionary Scoop     In this article, we uncover the origins of 10 items from the fashion industry. Even though all of these garments have evolved over time, their unusual names remain. 1-Denim    A couple of centuries before Levi Strauss popularized denim jeans, two cities in Europe were already developing the textile that would become an icon of …

Jeopardy, Wheel Face Civil Rights Complaints

by Jessica Guynn and Felecia Wellington Radel, USA TODAY    Executives at Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune discriminated against people of color, then fired them for raising concerns about a toxic work environment, two former employees claim in civil rights complaints obtained by USA TODAY.    The two former Sony Pictures Entertainment workers said they were …

Happy Birthday To The Great Art Garfunkel

by Kevin Burton    OK, so this is what I get for digging into my favorite songs.    First, Happy birthday to singer-songwriter Art Garfunkel, born on this day in 1941. I do not have a present for him today, but I have been pondering within his great gift to us.    It was the …

The Apostle Paul Says “Dress For Success”

by Kevin Burton    Some of us, as high school seniors, went to classes called “College Prep.,” and what an honor that was. Somebody thought we were “college material.”     One of my teachers, can’t remember which one, clued me in on what might be coming just around the corner by getting creative with my …

Careful How You Navigate Foreign Exchange

by Kevin Burton    There was a brief time in my life when I got paid in pesos, as I was teaching English to Mexican nationals in a language school in Puebla, Mexico.    I don’t remember all the specifics now, but for some reason I wanted change for (I think) a 1,000-peso bill.  I …

English Idiom Equivalents In Other Languages

by Dictionary Scoop    To say that the English language is filled to the brim with quirky and baffling idioms is no groundbreaking news.    While we have previously delved into the inherent strangeness of the idioms we use every day, one of the most beautiful aspects of these phrases is how difficult they are to translate: …