Origin of the phrase "Now we're cooking with
The original is "Now You're Cooking With Gas", supposedly part of an ad campaign from the era when gas stoves first started replacing wood stoves for cooking in the home. The Wikitionary …
Origin of the phrase, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
Jun 30, 2011 · There are many versions of this proverb, which suggests there are always several ways to do something. The earliest printed citation of this proverbial saying that I can find is in …
word choice - What types of sounds do cars make? - English …
Jul 1, 2012 · Modern cars aren't supposed to make much noise at all. There's the comfort of travellers and the general public near the highway to consider, not to mention the fact that fuel …
What is the origin of "sucker" and "it sucks"?
etymonline has for suck: O.E. sucan, from PIE root sug-/suk- of imitative origin. Meaning “do fellatio” is first recorded 1928. Slang sense of “be contemptible” first attested 1971 (the …
pronunciation - What's the rule for pronouncing “’s” as /z/ or /s ...
Feb 18, 2016 · The word ending spelled apostrophe "s" is a phonemic /z/ in all the instances I can think of. (But English spelling is not very regular, so there could be exceptions.) However, …
meaning - What does the term "86'd" relate to? - English …
Jan 15, 2013 · What does it mean when someone or something is referred to as being "86'd"?
Sice, cinque, cater, trey, deuce, ace, and then?
The set of numbers for a six-sided die are: ace, deuce, trey, cater, cinque, sice. They originate from Old French (cf. un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six in modern French). Ace comes from Latin ...
capitalization - Which words in a title should be capitalized ...
Aug 25, 2013 · Are there any concrete rules that say which words (parts of speech) in a title should start with a capital letter? What would be a correct capitalization for the title of this …
etymology - Origin of "the wrong end of the stick" - English …
May 16, 2012 · Before toilet paper and Sears catalogs, there was a wooden spatula called the stick. If you were in the outhouse after dark and you had to find the stick in the dark, you had a …
How can something be "fuller" or the "fullest"?
Jul 20, 2015 · Consider the definition for full (Source): full [foo l] adjective, fuller, fullest. completely filled; containing all that can be held; filled to utmost capacity: a full cup. complete; …