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On nineteenth-century British ships, a wooden cask, or butt, held drinking water. Its lid had a dipping hole called a scuttle. The two pieces combined were called a scuttlebutt. As would later be true of office workers sipping water from water coolers, sailors commonly shared gossip beside these containers while quenching their thirst. In time …

In honor of movie character “Mrs. Robinson,” the older woman played by Anne Bancroft in The Graduate who tried to seduce young Dustin Hoffman, we still call a seductress like her Mrs. Robinson. This is easier to say than “an older woman who hits on a younger man.” More fun, too.

Those who filmed oldtime weekly movie serials knew moviegoers were likely to return if they left their hero or heroine in dire distress at the end of each segment: tied to railroad tracks as a train approached, sinking in quicksand, or hanging from a cliff.  From this comes the term “cliffhanger” to characterize any dramatic, …

European settlers noted that Indian leaders stood on stumps of downed trees to address members of their tribe. This made so much sense that they adopted the practice themselves. By the mid-nineteenth century it was common to refer to political stump speeches, and to campaigning in general as stumping it.

Back in day making a call from a public telephone cost ten cents.  These phones were commonly used by whistle blowers to anonymously report misdeeds.  They dropped a dime.  Those who did this were called dime droppers.

When we say someone has “Moxie,” we hark back to a soft drink that was the leading pepper-upper of its era. In its heyday before World War II this drink was so popular that a song was written about it: “The Moxie Fox Trot.”