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Search us! Search The Word Detective and our family of websites: This is the easiest way to find a column on a particular word or phrase. To search for a specific phrase, put it between quotation marks. Comments are OPEN. We deeply appreciate the erudition and energy of our commenters. Your comments frequently make an invaluable contribution to the story of words and phrases in everyday usage over many years. Please note that comments are moderated, and will sometimes take a few days to appear.

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