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She had perhaps the largest personal dictionary collection in the world. It is certainly the most titillating.

Use them while you're talking turkey.

From poisoning to warfare, these are the dark origin stories behind eight common phrases and idioms.

An Irishman’s Diary

" " Anthony Quinn punches a sailor in a scene from the 1965 film A High Wind In Jamaica. Sailors have a reputation for swearing but is this justified? 20th Century-Fox/Getty Images Theres good reason to believe that sailors have always slung salty language on the high seas. At least that was the impression of the Puritan preacher Cotton Mather, who wrote in a 1699 sermon, "It has been an Observation, older than the Dayes of Plato, That the Sea is a School of Vice... Is not the Sin of pr...

Share CYPRIAN Ekwensi’s fictional prose, Burning Grass, vividly x-rays the kings of the jungle. I am using the ‘Fulani’ here as the approximation of Nigeria’s far north – because he is the consequential being there. And, I think anyone who fights him or wants to fight him or is being fought by him should read the history of his assumed ancestors, the Hyksos (Shepherd Kings) of Egypt, and then read Ekwensi. The Burning Grass is an evocative exhibition of what disease and deceit, dr...

Smithfield Bargain: A bargain whereby the purchaser is taken in. This is likewise frequently used to express matches or marriages contracted solely on t...

Smithfield Bargain: A bargain whereby the purchaser is taken in. This is likewise frequently used to express matches or marriages contracted solely on t...