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	<title>The Word Detective</title>
	<link>http://www.word-detective.com</link>
	<description>Semper Ubi Sub Ubi</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 05 May 2008 16:44:35 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<docs>http://backend.userland.com/rss092</docs>
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	<item>
		<title>April 2008 Issue</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, that&#8217;s it.  I&#8217;m outta here.
Not out of here, of course.   Gosh no.  I have cats to support.  I mean out of the 21st century.  You can have it back, thanks, none for me, not my sort of century.  In fact, you can have the last twenty years [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/april-2008-issue/</link>
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		<title>All told</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For whom the clinker clanks.
Dear Word Detective: I&#8217;ve pondered the question and I&#8217;ve done a little research on the internet only to find conflicting opinions on the subject. So I write to you, the master, to give me an answer to the question. Is it &#8220;all told&#8221; or &#8220;all tolled&#8221;? Even newspapers frustrate me on [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/all-told/</link>
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		<title>Steady the Buffs</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It was the late Lord Wobbly&#8217;s favourite colour.
Dear Word Detective: I can´t find the meaning of the phrase &#8220;steady the Buffs.&#8221; It occurs in the play &#8220;An Inspector Call&#8221; by J.B. Priestley, but I&#8217;ve looked it up in many reference books and it was a waste of time. If you can find the meaning for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/steady-the-buffs/</link>
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		<title>Revamp</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Wassamatta, you don&#8217;t wanna buy &#8220;Dictionary Ringtones&#8221;?
Dear Word Detective: I&#8217;ve checked your archive (I still think you should charge for access and password-protect it!) for &#8220;vamp&#8221; and &#8220;revamp&#8221;(as verbs) but found nothing (verb or noun). We&#8217;re revamping our website and I wondered if we ever really &#8220;vamped&#8221; it in the first place. Can you explain? [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/revamp/</link>
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		<title>Pretty please (with sugar on top)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Whipped cream works wonders with our cats, by the way.
Dear Word Detective: You know how hard it is to get a cat to do anything it doesn&#8217;t want to. So this morning I asked my cat to get off my robe and I actually said &#8220;pretty please,&#8221; and then, just to increase my humiliation, added [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/pretty-please-with-sugar-on-top/</link>
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		<title>Gumption</title>
		<description><![CDATA[But then my get-up-and-go got up and went.
Dear Word Detective: When I was growing up in Yorkshire, in the 1940s, &#8220;gumption&#8221; was commonly understood to mean &#8220;common sense,&#8221; or &#8220;street smarts.&#8221; I have since moved to Canada, where &#8220;gumption&#8221; seems to be a synonym for &#8220;courage&#8221; or &#8220;nerve.&#8221; I would be interested to see how [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/gumption/</link>
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		<title>Dead to rights</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You have the right to remain our top story for the next six months&#8230;.
Dear Word Detective: All the media and late-night jokesters are having a field day with the latest OJ escapade, of course. Several times I&#8217;ve heard or seen the phrase &#8220;this time they&#8217;ve got him dead to rights,&#8221; and I think we all [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/dead-to-rights/</link>
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		<title>Put the wind up</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ Beyond cold feet.
Dear Word Detective: I know that &#8220;put the wind up&#8221; means to make someone nervous or upset, but wonder about the origin. I had an elderly aunt who often complained of feeling cold air flowing up her nose (of such tales are word origins made) and have found myself using the phrase [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/put-the-wind-up/</link>
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		<title>Putting on</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Copy editor (with time machine) needed.  
Dear Word Detective: In Craig Wilson&#8217;s September 12, 2007 column in USA Today, he quoted liberally from a new book of quotations compiled by one Elise Lufkin. The book is called &#8220;Not Bartlett&#8217;s.&#8221; Here&#8217;s Lufkin&#8217;s quote from Mark Twain: &#8220;Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/putting-on/</link>
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		<title>Mortress of Brawn</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Next best thing to a bacon milkshake.
Dear Word Detective: Speaking, as you recently were, of authors&#8217; using arcane words, I have stumbled upon a puzzler in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle&#8217;s novel, The White Company. The tale is set in 14th century England and France, and is rife with what I suppose are 14th century terms [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/mortress-of-brawn/</link>
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		<title>Pantry, Larder, Still Room</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Need&#8230; more&#8230; cake!

Dear Word Detective: We were touring someone&#8217;s new home when they showed us a little room off of the kitchen. Our hostess called it her &#8220;larder.&#8221; I would have called it a &#8220;pantry.&#8221; My British friend said it was more of a &#8220;still room.&#8221; Ok, what is going on? Why all these different [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/pantry-larder-still-room/</link>
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		<title>Gremlin</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The ghost in the carburetor. 
Dear Word Detective: I was surprised to see no discussion of &#8220;gremlin&#8221; in your archives. I saw it recently in reference to unusual or bad automobile names. American Motors made a model called the Gremlin (which has the meaning of throwing a monkey wrench into things, I believe). I remember [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/gremlin/</link>
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		<title>Charlatan</title>
		<description><![CDATA[From the folks who brought you Collateralized Dust Bunnies.
Dear Word Detective: I am looking for the origin of the word &#8220;charlatan.&#8221; Thus far I have found its occurrence in early Italian usage and a possible link in Latin. Are there any roots going further back? In Greek, Hebrew, Sanskrit? &#8212; Abbie Lipschutz, Houston, Texas.
Perhaps. We [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/charlatan/</link>
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		<title>Throes</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Wild pitch.
Dear Word Detective:  A local newspaper writer wrote that someone was &#8220;in the throws of despair.&#8221; Rather than going ballistic, I sat down and wrote him that I thought that you &#8220;throw&#8221; a ball, but someone is in the &#8220;throes of despair.&#8221;  Since then, believe it or not, I read the same [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/throes/</link>
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		<title>Matross</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And where, exactly, is the Slough of Despond? 
Dear Word Detective:  The word &#8220;matross&#8221; was used extensively in a novel I just read.  The context is 18th century naval warfare and the American Revolution.  The word is used as a noun describing members of the ship&#8217;s crew.  Can you tell me [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/matross/</link>
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		<title>Lock, Stock and Barrel</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Drop the chalupa. 
Dear Word Detective:  I always thought that &#8220;lock, stock and barrel&#8221; meant that if you bought a store complete it came with the lock to lock the door, all of the stock in the store and the barrel (presumably filled with pickles or beans or&#8230;).  Then, as I was looking [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/lock-stock-and-barrel/</link>
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		<title>Grand (one thousand)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, it&#8217;s still a lot to me.
Dear Word Detective:  My husband and I were watching TV, and the common word &#8220;grand&#8221; was used for &#8220;one thousand dollars.&#8221;  Can you tell me the origin of this usage?  I have found one place that says it started with bookies in the 1920&#8217;s, but that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/grand-one-thousand/</link>
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		<title>Cod (mock)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A fish too far.
Dear Word Detective:  The Economist this past week used the term &#8220;cod-medieval.&#8221;  A Google search turns up a few hundred hits, all of them referring to the pseudo-magical-medieval D&#38;D-type thing, but no clear definitions.  Is there a more precise definition, and where does it come from? &#8212; Joshua Engel.
Forsooth, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://www.word-detective.com/2008/04/11/cod-mock/</link>
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