“Three melons and a dwarf sat in the front seat of Marilee’s ‘72 Dodge, but the cop was not amused.”
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The etymology of “rain check”
As we wrap up the first week of our Rain Check event, we wondered aloud at the etymology of the phrase “rain check”. So we did a little research and here’s what we found:
The term originated with baseball—isn’t that the starting point for everything in life? In the 1880s, when a game was cancelled due to inclement weather, it was standard practice to offer paying spectators a ticket entitling them to future admission at another game.
By the early 1900s, the term had been transferred to other forms of entertainment and, eventually, “rain check” came to mean a way of offering customers a chance to purchase an item [in this case, books], at a later date, for the earlier announced sale price [that would be, $3.99].
Thanks to the Online Etymology Dictionary for the assist.
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We hear this is one of readers’ favorite passages from Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same
A work truck rolls onto the bridge, maybe heading out of town to the new jail. The guy looks like an engineer from Anchorage. He pulls alongside us, slow, trying to pass, then stops. There are just a few inches between our vehicles. The guy folds in his side mirror. He rolls down his window, and Go, seeing this, rolls down his.“You got trouble?”
Go-boy says, “No, we’re just waiting.”
The guy looks up and down the slough for signs of something to wait for. I look with him. He glances around the open fields in front of his truck, then he turns in his seat and looks back at the village. There is nothing happening anywhere. He asks, “For what?”
I am wondering the same thing. Go stares through the windshield, straight down the road and back into town… . A kid on a bike rolls across the gravel where it curves between two homes. On the left side is a row of dogs who’ve appeared, sitting on top of their little plywood houses, ugly dogs, watching us.
Go turns back to the guy in his truck, says, “We’re waiting to find out.” -
I find myself reading aloud from this book even when there’s nobody around to hear me. A couple of mismatched teenage boys in Alaska, complex family stuff, Eskimo Jesus tattoos and The Great Forgiveness Conspiracy.
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Our Favorite Kinds of Kisses #5: THE MAKE-UP KISS
“Kiss and make-up—but too much makeup has ruined many a kiss.”
—Mae West
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Our Favorite Kinds of Kisses #3: STOLEN KISSES
“A legal kiss is never as good as a stolen one.” —Guy de Maupassant
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Favorite First Lines
“Emerging whalelike out of the winter gloom, the white van with Happy Harley at the wheel finally came to a crunching stop on our gravel driveway.”
— George Rabasa in Miss Entropia and the Adam Bomb.Click to read more… .
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Geye has perfected the push and pull of tension that keeps readers glued to the page, and at times, genuinely surprises with a feint and a turn in another direction.
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20 obsolete English words that should make a comeback →
Compliments of MatadorNetwork.com.
What’s your favorite? We like perissology.
