&lt;p&gt;SUMMARY:&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;If you say to someone the Spanish equivalent of you&#039;re giving me green hairs (me sacas canas verdes), it means that person is making you angry. In Japan, the phrase that literally translates as &quot;one red dot&quot; refers metaphorically to &quot;the lone woman in a group of men.&quot; Martha and Grant discuss colorful idioms around the world, plus: making money hand over fist, taking wooden nickels, names for the end of a loaf of bread, and where a sneeze may evoke the response, Scat, Tom! Get your tail out of the gravy!&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;FULL DETAILS&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;If you say to someone the Spanish equivalent of you&#039;re giving me green hairs (me sacas canas verdes), it means that person is making you angry. In Japan, the phrase that literally translates as &quot;one red dot&quot; refers metaphorically to &quot;the lone woman in a group of men.&quot; Martha and Grant discuss these and other idioms collected online in Alan Kennedy&#039;s Color/Language Project.&lt;br /&gt;http://www.starchamber.com/colors/color-idioms.html&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Is it proper to speak of servicing a customer, or does that sound too suggestive? Is it okay to use the word utilize instead of use? Is it pretentious to use the term formulate instead of simply form?&lt;br /&gt;What do you call the end piece of a loaf of bread? Names for that last slice include heel, bread butt, kissing crust, bunce, skirk, krunka, truna, tumpee, canust, the nose, and in Spanish, codo, which means &quot;elbow.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In Spanish and French, if you have the equivalent of &quot;a white night,&quot; it means you didn&#039;t get much sleep. In Sweden, if you have a &quot;white week,&quot; it means you didn&#039;t drink a drop of alcohol.&lt;br /&gt;Quiz Guy John Chaneski offers a puzzle about portmanteau words called &quot;Say Can You See.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Why do we say someone is making money hand over fist? Does it have to do with two competitors putting one hand over the other on a baseball bat to determine who&#039;s up first? Or does it have to do with pulling a rope?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;More great color idioms, this time from Serbo-Croatian: In that language, a phrase that translates as I can&#039;t see a white cat means &quot;I&#039;m very tired,&quot; and to stare like a calf at a colorful door means to &quot;look upon something with surprise and wonder.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Dallas man says his father, who served in Vietnam, signed letters back home to the family with the phrase Don&#039;t take any wooden nickels. The hosts explain that this expression means&amp;nbsp; &quot;don&#039;t let anyone swindle you.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;In Mandarin Chinese, if you&#039;re big red and big purple, it means you&#039;re &quot;famous and popular.&quot;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Scat, Tom! Get your tail out of the gravy! In some parts of the country, especially the South, people say this after someone sneezes. But what does a cat warming its tail in the gravy boat have to do with sneezing?&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;Some foreign idioms involving color have been adopted whole into English. A case in point: French bete noire. Literally, it means &quot;black beast,&quot; and it&#039;s used figuratively now in English to mean anything particularly disliked or avoided.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;Grant recommends two blogs about writing well and copyediting: Merrill Perlman writes The Language Corner blog for the Columbia Journalism Review.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;http://www.cjr.org/language_corner/&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;And Philip B. Corbett of the New York Times reports on actual grammatical and usage mistakes in that newspaper in his blog, After Deadline.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;http://topics.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/after-deadline/&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;An Indianapolis listener has a copy of a wedding poem that refers to the thrice-happy pair. Is a thrice-happy pair three times as happy as anyone else? Martha explains that the idea goes all the way back to Roman poetry. Here&#039;s an example from a translation of Horace&#039;s Ode 1.13.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;http://bit.ly/g4QwP0&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;Does the expression petered out have to do with the Apostle Peter denying he knew Jesus? Au contraire. Petered out may derive from the French peter, meaning to &quot;pass gas.&quot; Another theory is that the expression originated in mining and the use of saltpeter in explosives. &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;A fan of the TV series &quot;West Wing&quot; was puzzled by a character&#039;s use of the term pulchritude. It&#039;s a pretty ugly term for a word that means &quot;beauty.&quot; Check out what some other commenters are saying about the word.&lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeschooling/2010/10/pulchritude/ &lt;br /&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;br /&gt;Is it grammatically correct for a high school football team to call itself the Vanguards? A Wisconsin listener argues that Vanguard is already a plural noun. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;--&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;A Way with Words is funded by its listeners: http://waywordradio.org/donate&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Get your language question answered on the air! Call or write with your questions at any time:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Email: words@waywordradio.org&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Phone: &lt;br /&gt;United States and Canada toll-free (877) WAY-WORD/(877) 929-9673&lt;br /&gt;London +44 20 7193 2113&lt;br /&gt;Mexico City +52 55 8421 9771&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Donate: http://waywordradio.org/donate&lt;br /&gt;Site: http://waywordradio.org/&lt;br /&gt;Podcast: http://waywordradio.org/podcast/&lt;br /&gt;Forums: http://waywordradio.org/discussion/&lt;br /&gt;Newsletter: http://waywordradio.org/newsletter/&lt;br /&gt;Twitter: http://twitter.com/wayword/&lt;br /&gt;Skype: skype://waywordradio &lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Copyright 2011, Wayword LLC.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;feedflare&quot;&gt;
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