right · 98 questions (40% of 245)

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Burlesque and vaudeville: comedians were billed as first, second and third bananas, and Phil Silvers credited Harry Steppe with introducing the term around 1927. 'Top banana' later became slang for any boss.

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Ship toilets were at the bow (the 'head'), since the wind from the stern carried waste away; 'head' for the bow dates to 1485 and its use for the toilet is in print by 1708 (Woodes Rogers).

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'Toe the line' is correct; 'tow' is a common misspelling. First print is from the British Army (1738 'The Army Regulator'), with other theories including the Royal Navy, bare-knuckle boxing and school.

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First noun use is in the 1940s (1949 Washington Post), likely from 'crash program' or 'crash landing' in aviation and military training; the education sense appeared in the 1950s.

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Soup is the first course and nuts the last; the Roman 'ab ovo usque ad mala' (eggs to apples) is a predecessor. The specific phrase 'soup to nuts' is American, from the early 1900s.

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A minced oath, a euphemism for 'devil', used by Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor (c. 1600); it predates Charles Dickens.

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In the US, buzzards are hawk-like raptors that hunt live prey while vultures eat carrion; in the UK 'buzzard' is a hawk and vultures are sometimes also called buzzards. Every condor is a vulture; the Andean condor is the largest vulture species.

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19th-century New York City slang, likely from the Dutch 'hoekje' (hide-and-seek, or a nook to hide in); it appears in a 1848 dictionary of Americanisms as schoolboy slang for playing truant.

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Boxing: contestants literally threw hats into the ring to join the fight (London Morning Chronicle, 1804). Figurative use is attested in 1820, and Teddy Roosevelt made it a political phrase in 1912.

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From William of Orange's 17th-century vow to defend the Dutch Republic to the death, 'to die in the last ditch'; it caught on around 1900 as a phrase for a final attempt.

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Technically a stew: soup is liquid-based (ingredients submerged), while stew is thicker with just enough liquid to cover the ingredients. Chili is often considered a type of stew, with Tex-Mex origins.

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"Damn" (from Latin "damnare", to condemn) became an intensifier, and "damnedest" as a superlative is first recorded about 1828-1830 (some sources say 1596), with a colloquial American flavor.

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It's "tenterhooks": hooks on a "tenter", a wooden frame used since the 14th century to stretch wet woolen cloth to dry. From the 18th century "on tenterhooks" meant in suspense, like cloth held stretched. "Tenter" is from Latin "tendere" (to stretch).

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Mainly communication of excitement and mood, and tails also help with balance, temperature regulation (blood vessels) and swimming. A 2013 Current Biology study found dogs wag more to the right when relaxed or happy and more to the left when stressed or anxious.

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It comes from carousels, where riders reaching out from the horses tried to grab a brass ring from an arm for a free ride. It means a very desirable prize, and has appeared in dictionaries since the late 19th century (and in Catcher in the Rye).

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They originated in radio dramas sponsored by soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble, starting in the early 1930s (Painted Dreams on WGN in 1930, Guiding Light in 1937). The term followed "horse opera" for low-budget westerns.

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There is no difference: they are the same animal (Marmota monax, a marmot). "Woodchuck" comes from the Algonquian word "wuchak" and has nothing to do with chucking wood. Groundhog Day was brought by German settlers in Pennsylvania, who used hedgehogs in Germany.

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The name came from a naming contest for Buffalo's All-America Football Conference team (originally the Bison); owner James Burrell liked a writer's comparison of the team to a band of "Buffalo Bills" after William "Buffalo Bill" Cody, the showman born in Iowa in 1846 who founded Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883.

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It comes from baseball's spitball pitch (MLB banned it in 1911), though earlier uses exist: an 1794 Connecticut ad for a "spitball" for blacking shoes and 1830s kids' paper wads, which weren't used figuratively until the early 1900s.

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It's "bated breath", meaning held or reduced, short for "abated", and it appears in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. "Baited" is a common misspelling, and "bated" is now used almost only in this phrase.

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Dogs were considered an undesirable animal in 17th-century England and many phrases used them negatively ("dog tired", "dirty dog"). "Sick as a dog" refers to vomiting, with the earliest literary use in 1705 (some find 1592).

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It first appears in the early 1980s in magazines and newspapers, derived from earlier phrases like "whatever suits you" (1820s) and 1970s variants like "whatever turns you on", with a sexual connotation.

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In the 16th century a piece of spiced, scorched toast was commonly put in wine to soften bad flavor and stale bread. Shakespeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor has "put a toast in it", and drinking someone's health as a "toast" is recorded among 18th-century university students. Toastmasters appeared in the 17th and 18th centuries.

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AM is Latin "ante meridiem" and PM is "post meridiem". The Egyptians divided the day into 24 parts in base 12 (sundial by day, water clock at night), and the Romans also used 12-hour divisions. The terms are first recorded in English in 1563.

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Ancient Roman law required ten witnesses at a wedding (a precursor to the bridal party). Medieval marriages were contracts between families; the Church required banns in 1215, and Massachusetts started marriage licenses in 1639. Witnesses help prevent fraud and elopement against family approval.

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Seedless grapes began as a natural mutation (known since ancient Rome) and fruit plants are propagated from cuttings or grafting, so they are genetic clones. Seedless watermelons are triploid (three sets of chromosomes) from crossing a diploid with a tetraploid, which makes them unable to reproduce.

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"Toboggan" (a sled) is from the Canadian French "tabagane" from Algonquin (Mi'kmaq), recorded in 1829. The hat is short for "toboggan cap", worn while tobogganing; by 1929 the second word was dropped in the American South, where snow is rare.

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"Jig" was Elizabethan slang for a trick or practical joke (16th-century, about 1590), so "the jig is up" means the trick has been exposed. The first documented use is 1777, and "gig is up" is a later variation.

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The earliest known use is in a 1977 book by Brian Glanville about the language of football, where the "nuts" are the testicles of a player through whose legs the ball is passed. Another theory is that unscrupulous exporters mixed wooden fake nutmegs into shipments.

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It was originally used mockingly for an impossible act: a late-1800s physics textbook asks why a man cannot lift himself by pulling up on his bootstraps. It was sarcastic in the early 1900s (Booker T. Washington referenced it in 1895, Joyce in 1922), and the meaning later shifted to self-reliance. A Baron Munchausen story involves pulling oneself from a swamp by his hair.

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"10-4" is one of the 10-codes created by the Illinois State Police's communications director Charles Hopper between 1937 and 1940 for police radio. "Roger" is from the WWII phonetic alphabet for R ("received"), which came from the Morse habit of replying with the letter R.

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A rice cooker cup is about 180 ml, while a US cup is about 240 ml. The rice cooker uses a traditional Japanese measure (similar in volume to a sake cup), so the two are not interchangeable.

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The earliest reference is to a pharaoh's birthday (Genesis 40; pharaohs were thought to become gods when crowned). The Greeks added candles for the moon goddess Artemis, and the Romans were first to celebrate commoners (a cake for men turning 50). Candles were thought to ward off evil spirits.

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From the music trade magazine Cashbox, which put a red bullet next to chart positions of songs making sharp upward movement in the 1960s-70s (Billboard also used it). It came to mean rapidly rising or the best.

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Mosquito larvae feed fish and adults feed birds, bats and frogs, and males pollinate plants. Of about 3,500 species, only about 400 transmit diseases. Researchers are using CRISPR to make mosquitoes incapable of carrying disease or infertile instead of eradicating them.

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Many historians point to the Oorang Indians of the early NFL (1920s), whose owner Walter Lingo promoted his Airedale dog kennel with outrageous halftime shows. College football bands and cheerleaders also have a long history, and the ABA's Pacers had halftime events like Victor the Wrestling Bear.

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Often attributed to Stephen Crane's 1896 Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, with earlier uses in Fritz Reuter's 1862 German novel (about a shoemaker) and possibly Ben Jonson's 1605 Volpone. The Italian "to be cold in the feet" meant to have no money, and the physiology of adrenaline is a plausible basis.

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Eleven time zones, from Kaliningrad in the west to Kamchatka in the far east.

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From the dice game craps (which may come from an Arabic game or Roman knucklebones). "Crapshoot" is a newer word: the earliest examples are from the 1960s and it wasn't widely used until the 1980s.

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It's a variant of "down the drain" (the British equivalent is "down the pan"). The earliest citation found is from a 1954 US sports report (the Charleston Daily Mail), and no clear mechanism is known.

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No firm origin. A tailoring origin seems plausible ("work cut out for you" dates to 1551), and an 1859 book uses "stick a pin in it" figuratively to mean setting something aside to return to later.

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A nautical mile is one minute of latitude (about 1.15 statute miles). France tied it to the 1791 definition of the meter (one ten-millionth of a quarter meridian), and navigation by latitude and longitude took hold around 1500. A knot is one nautical mile per hour, originally measured by counting knots on a rope with a "common log". The statute mile goes back to the Roman 1,000 paces.

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It can be too warm to snow but not too cold. Snow can fall at very low temperatures given a moisture source, but heavy snowfall tends to occur when the air near the ground is relatively warm (about -9 C or warmer) because warmer air holds more water vapor. Very cold air is just too dry.

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Smoked and cured herring turns red and smells pungent. The figurative meaning appears in a 1686 gentleman's magazine, which suggested dragging a red herring across a fox's trail to confuse hounds, and a 1697 horsemanship tract suggested dragging a cat or fox carcass to train horses.

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Germany is credited with the modern tradition in the 16th century, building on older pagan evergreen customs (the Romans had Saturnalia). A Martin Luther candle story is dubious, and German settlers brought it to America. The "Christmas pickle" tradition is probably an American invention by salesmen selling glass ornaments in the late 1800s.

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From the custom of marking bar tabs and scores on a slate in pubs. It is attested in 1597 ("all my debts stand chalked up on the post for liquor"), and it came to mean to attribute something to a cause.

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It originally meant the pupil, the central aperture of the eye. It appears in Old English in 885 (King Alfred's translation of Gregory's Pastoral Care), in Shakespeare and in the 1611 King James Bible, which translated a Hebrew phrase meaning "little man of the eye". Apples themselves originated in Kazakhstan.

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Several sources: a ship's wheelhouse (the pilot house where the wheel is, or the housing around a paddlewheel), and baseball, where the batter's power zone is the "wheelhouse". Mark Twain used the term.

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The popular story that it comes from a legal limit on the thickness of a stick for beating a wife is a false etymology. The earliest print uses are 17th-century (a Scottish preacher, 1692), meaning a rough practical measure.

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In the early 1950s the National Hurricane Center used the phonetic alphabet (Able, Baker, Charlie), switched to alphabetical female names in 1953, and added male names in 1978-79. A storm is named once its winds reach 39 mph.

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The eye of a hurricane is extremely low pressure, because warm air rises there, creating a cyclone. The lowest recorded pressure was Typhoon Tip at 870 millibars in 1979.

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Saltwater fish do drink water, directing some of it into the digestive tract to keep hydrated, while freshwater fish absorb water through their skin and gills by osmosis and do not need to drink.

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The three-color method was suggested by James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and Thomas Sutton produced the first color photograph in 1861. Kodachrome (1935) was the first modern three-layer color film. Digital sensors have pixels responsive to red, green or blue.

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It was preceded by Pepsi's 1950 slogan "more bounce to the ounce" and was used by Defense Secretary Charles Wilson in 1954 for Eisenhower's "New Look" policy, with a 1940 ad as the earliest print citation. "Buck" for dollar goes back to deerskin trading (a 1748 reference), with a possible link to the "sawbuck" $10 bill.

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From the straight line a honeybee takes when returning to its hive. It appears in early 19th-century print (one example from 1808), and "bee lining" was used to locate wild bee colonies by trigonometry.

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Cracker cows are real (Florida cracker cattle, a small breed from Spanish stock). The word "cracker" for poor frontier whites likely comes from "whip cracker" (cattle drivers), and it existed even in Shakespeare's time as a word for a boaster. In the 1940s it became an epithet for bigoted whites.

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The Mint Act of 1792 created the dollar and decimal coinage, with the first coins struck in 1793. The government didn't issue paper money until 1861 (only occasional treasury notes). Lincoln was the first historical figure on a coin (the 1909 penny), the Jefferson nickel is from 1938 and the FDR dime from 1946. A penny costs about 1.5 cents to make.

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No. "Heat lightning" is ordinary lightning from a distant thunderstorm that is too far away for the thunder to be heard, and cloud-to-cloud lightning is common.

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The seven-day planetary week comes from the Babylonians and the Hellenistic Greeks, and the Romans replaced their eight-day cycle with it by about AD 60. Saturday, Sunday and Monday honor Saturn, the Sun and the Moon; Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday honor the Germanic gods Tiw, Woden, Thor and Frigg/Freya. Tuesday's Tiw corresponds to the Roman god of war, Mars.

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Not settled, but the leading idea is that much of it arrived from asteroids and comets (the deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio matches asteroids), possibly including the giant impact that formed the Moon. Outgassing from the early magma ocean contributed, and an atmosphere was needed to hold it.

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He chose 31 because it's 13 reversed and because his sister Cheryl Miller wore it. The Pacers retired it in 2005 after his final season, he entered the Hall of Fame in 2012, and UCLA retired it in 2013 (it was already retired for Ed O'Bannon).

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A locking joint lets them stand on one leg with no muscle effort, and tucking a leg also reduces heat loss through their legs and feet. A study found they stand on one leg more in colder water. They are pink from carotenoids in algae and brine shrimp.

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From examining a horse's teeth to judge its age and condition; the earliest print example found is from 1913 in horse racing, where the most trusted information came from the trainers. A related phrase, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth", goes back to St. Jerome around AD 400.

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The most accepted etymology is that wartime pilots dreamed of buying a farm after the war, and when one was killed, the insurance payout or military pension allowed his family to pay it off.

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Your postage covers domestic handling, transport (often via a private carrier like FedEx or UPS), and a fee paid to the receiving country's postal service. The Universal Postal Union, founded in 1874 and based in Switzerland, sets the fees, and before that mail depended on bilateral treaties.

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Cannibalism occurs in about 25% of encounters and is mostly seen in captivity, driven largely by hunger. Cannibalistic females laid more eggs (about 88 vs. 37 in one study). An egg case hatches 100-200 mantises, of which only about a third reach maturity.

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"Bowl" comes from the Rose Bowl, the first post-season college football game, and the Yale Bowl's bowl-shaped stadium design. "Super Bowl" came from Lamar Hunt, whose daughter played with a toy called the Super Ball.

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Elves come from ancient Scandinavian and Celtic folklore as nature spirits that guarded homes. The 1823 poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas" calls Santa a "jolly old elf", an 1857 Harper's Weekly poem has him keeping elves at work, and by 1891 he merged with the Swedish "tomte".

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Both are cornmeal. Polenta is coarser ground yellow corn from Italian cuisine, while grits is a finer grind of white corn (hominy) and is a Southern American dish.

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The gray wolf and coyote are close relatives from a common ancestor and were not bred by humans. Hyenas are not canids at all; they are their own family and are more closely related to cats than to dogs.

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The most widespread story involves sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels and his wife Alma, 24 years his junior, around 1908. The earliest recorded use is 1923, when "sugar" was slang for money, and a candy called Papa Sucker renamed itself "Sugar Daddy".

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It comes from the Irish legend of Stingy Jack, who was doomed to roam with a coal in a hollowed turnip, and from the will-o'-the-wisp lights over peat bogs. The custom of carving them for Halloween began in Ireland in the 19th century, and immigrants switched to pumpkins in America.

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Both are gastropods in the phylum Mollusca, and slugs often have a small internal or vestigial shell. They are closely related but separate species, and land snails and slugs are the only gastropods living on land. Snails live 2 to 3 years in the wild and up to 15 in captivity.

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"Druthers" is a late-19th-century American contraction of "would rather" ("I'd rather" to "druther"). One of the first known uses in print is by Mark Twain in Tom Sawyer.

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It became nationally popular in the 1840 election as a slogan for "Old Kinderhook", Martin Van Buren's nickname (he was from Kinderhook, New York). It began as a joking abbreviation of "all correct" in an 1839 Boston newspaper, during a fad for abbreviations. Other etymologies are debated.

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"Cooties" is thought to come from Malay/Austronesian "kutu" (a biting parasite). British soldiers used it for lice in the trenches of World War I, and usage spiked around 1920. By the mid-20th century North American kids used it for an imaginary germ, and the "shot" likely echoes polio vaccination.

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The name comes from Omar and Cora Fanning, Illinois cucumber farmers who sold sweet and sour pickles in the 1920s and trademarked "Fanning's Bread and Butter Pickle" in 1923. They were a cheap staple during the Depression.

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From late 1800s horse racing, when a wire was strung across the track above the finish line to help judges determine which horse crossed first. A wire was also used at the start line, and "wire to wire" means leading from start to finish.

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The hosts' guess matched the research: lawns began around castles, where sheep and goats kept them grazed, and were later copied by landowners. The lawnmower and designers like Frederick Law Olmsted spread them. One theory is that humans prefer short grass because savannas helped them spot danger.

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Kid gloves are made from the skin of young goats, which is very soft. Mentions go back to 1730s England, where the term was a slight implying daintiness. The figurative use appeared in America, with early print examples in an 1849 magazine and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865).

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From opium pipes, via the English literati of the 18th and 19th centuries; it appears in US newspapers in the 1890s.

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A Japanese anime based on the Dragon Ball manga. It adapts the later 325 chapters of the 519-chapter manga, aired in Japan from 1989 to 1996, and premiered in the US in 1996. Its catchphrase "Kamehameha" is what a rookie yells after hitting a three-pointer.

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From French "piquenique", first recorded in 1692 and likely from "piquer" (to pick) and "nique" (a trifle). It entered English in 1748 via Lord Chesterfield. A popular folk etymology, "pick a niche", is debated.

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It traces to the Roman feast of Lupercalia (February 13-15). Two men named Valentine were executed on February 14 in the third century, and Pope Gelasius I later merged the saint's day with Lupercalia. Chaucer and Shakespeare romanticized it, and Hallmark began making Valentine's cards in 1913. Cupid is Roman, the son of Venus and Mars; his Greek counterpart is Eros.

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Adopted in the US in 1887 when Punxsutawney's newspaper editor promoted the town's groundhog, from a Pennsylvania German custom rooted in European weather lore (a badger or bear) tied to Candlemas. A shadow means six more weeks of winter.

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"Fell" is old English for cruel or terrible, and "swoop" is the sudden attack of a bird of prey. It appears in Shakespeare's Macbeth, when Macduff learns his family was killed "at one fell swoop".

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A biologist's theory is that the white tail confuses predators during the chase: it disappears when the rabbit turns, forcing the predator to refocus. The research is not peer reviewed. Deer may also flick their tails to signal danger.

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The kissing custom is English, where a berry was picked before each kiss. The romantic overtones are linked to Druids, the Greek festival of Saturnalia, and a Norse myth in which Loki killed Baldur with a mistletoe arrow. The word comes from German "mistel" (dung) and "tan" (twig), because the plant spreads through bird droppings.

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In ancient Greece and Rome it represented the phallus (the Greeks called it "catapygon"), with the neighboring fingers standing for the testicles. In the US it dates to the 1890s, possibly via Italian immigrants. "The bird" comes from the 1860s expression "give the big bird", meaning to hiss like a goose.

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It traces to the Celtic festival of Samhain (the new year on November 1, when the dead were thought to return). The Christian feast of All Hallows was set around 731-741 under Pope Gregory III, and Halloween is roughly 2,000 years old. Pumpkin pie is much more recent, with recipes from the 1670s.

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Those four are correct: Jalen Rose (1999-00), Jermaine O'Neal (2001-02), Danny Granger (2008-09) and Paul George (2012-13). The award began in 1985-86, and only Orlando has more winners than the Pacers.

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Both are domesticated South American camelids. Llamas are bigger (up to about 400 lb) and bred as pack animals; alpacas are smaller (100-175 lb) and bred for fiber for about 6,000 years. Llamas have long banana-shaped ears, alpacas shorter spear-shaped ones. They can crossbreed, producing a huarizo.

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Moisture helps capture scent particles, and the wet nose also helps regulate body temperature.

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50.

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The Andes, about 7,000 km.

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First gentleman (or first husband), though he would still be addressed as Mr. President.

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Seas are smaller than oceans and usually sit where land and ocean meet, partially enclosed by land; there is no single overarching rule.

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Five: Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic and Southern.

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