Around this time of year, we’re all loosening our belts and getting ready to gorge ourselves on hot, gravy-laden turkey. So we couldn’t help but wonder about things at the opposite end of the temperature spectrum: the “cold turkey” invoked when people up and quit some substance, behavior or habit suddenly. According to the OED, the phrase first appeared in print in the early 20th century, and was later tied specifically to quitting addictive substances in the 1920s, but its exact origin is... READ ON

Last week, readers @amyh914 and @johnjaramillo13 were wondering about the origins of “scab” as an insult for people who cross picket lines. John believes it “[infers] disease and ugliness,” and he’s got it right—but let’s fill in the details.According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “scab” was first recorded in English around 1250, and referred to diseases of the skin. Two hundred years later, it appeared with the common definition we know today, a hard crust that forms over a... READ ON

Image credit: ComstockThe first documented use of the phrase in the sense of “revealing a secret" comes from a book review in a 1760 issue of The London Magazine, wherein the reviewer laments that, "We could have wished that the author had not let the cat out of the bag."That, unfortunately, is about all we know for sure. There are two popularly cited origins for the phrase, but neither is very clearly recorded as leading to... READ ON

Reader Jonathan wrote in to ask, “Why do we call other countries by names that they do not use themselves? Where did these names come from and why do we use... READ ON