Sexy Prunes - 16 December 2013

<p>You're in a business meeting. Is it bad manners to take out phone to send or read a text? A new study suggests that how you feel about mid-meeting texting differs depending on your age and sex. Grant and Martha offer book recommendations for readers and writers on your gift list. And why do people from Boston sound the way they do? Plus, how translators translate, sky vs. skies, caboose vs. crummy, gentleman cows, orey-eyed, and an entire rap song without the letter E.<br /><br />FULL DETAILS<br /><br />A new study finds that 20-somethings think it's okay to text and read emails during meetings, and men are more likely than women to approve.<br /><br />Orey-eyed, meaning "enraged," comes from the Scots language. Orey dates at least as far back as the 1700s, and has meant many different things, including "drunk," <br /><br />A TV meterologist in Morehead, Minnesota wonders about the word sky. Is it incorrect to use it in the plural? We often refer to the skies over a large area, as in the skies over Kansas.<br /><br />This week's quiz from John Chaneski is a fill-in-the-blank game.<br /><br />How do translators of literature decide which words to use? B.J. Epstein, a Chicago native now living in the UK, is a translator with an excellent blog on the subject called Brave New Words.<br /><br />You think you look sexy saying Cheese! as a photographer snaps away? Better yet, try cooing Prunes!<br /><br />Train conductors sometimes refer to the caboose as the crummy. The name may derive from the idea of crew workers leaving crumbs and other garbage all over the back of that last care. Gandy dancers are railroad maintenance workers whose synchronized movements while straightening tracks resemble dancing.<br /><br />E.B. White knew a thing or two about artfully declining an invitation.<br /><br />The word doppich means "clumsy or awkward" is used primarily in Southeastern and South Central Pennsylvannia, and goes back to a German word for the same. Another handy word with Pennsylvania Dutch roots: grex, also spelled kr