Like a Boss - 16 January 2012

<p>SHOW SUMMARY<br /><br />It's a bird! It's a plane! It's . . . "witches' knickers"? Well, what do YOU call those stray plastic bags littering the landscape? Also, what it means to do something "like a boss," how to hyphenate correctly, and why we say we have a "crush" on someone. What do you call when you meet someone for the first time, and they ask if you know so-and-so, just because you share an area code? Also, similes from the 1800s, a rule on hyphens, and the truth about what happens when you turn a bull loose in a china shop.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />What do you call those plastic shopping bags that litter the street? Some know them as witches' britches or witches' knickers. Others prefer urban tumbleweeds. In American Beauty, Ricky Fitts famously called one the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. Either way, despite the effort to introduce reusable bags, the plastic variety continues to build up. Lori Robinson of Santa Barbara has even gone so far as to collect them from Tanzanian villages and distribute the more sustainable variety.<br /><br />http://animprobablelife.com/2011/11/26/lori-robinson-bag-project-africa/<br /><br />http://africainside.org/favorite-charities/one-wordplastics/<br /><br />A clumsy person may be known as a bull in a china shop or a bull in a china closet. The former came into use first, in the early 1800s, but a bull in china closet is all the more evocative.  Plus, according to the MythBusters, a bull in a china shop is surprisingly nimble.<br /><br />http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/db/animals/bull-china-shop-cause-dish-carnage.html<br /><br />When did the expression to have a crush on someone come into use? The television series Downton Abbey has dropped this and other fun bits of language, but no need to worry about its historical accuracy- crush has been around since the early 1880s. To mash on someone or crash on someone are idioms in the same vein, and may derive from the idea of an emotional collision between two prospective flames.<br /><br />As