Continued from here ...

Those feeling a need to know what's going on, no matter how worrying, might find what they're looking for at this site that shows every global incident that may be terrorism-related almost as it happens in the world.

Happily for me, there's been nothing in my neck of the woods, but that's not true of just about everywhere else.

If you're looking for some informative entertainment online, here's something enlightening. It came to my attention when I used the phrase, to "call a spade a spade" ... an innocuous cliché ... or so I thought:

It might be thought that this derives from the derogatory slang use of the term spade meaning Negro, as exemplified in 'as black as the ace of spades'. That view of it as derogatory might also be thought to be supported by this piece from John Trapp's Mellificium theologicum, or the marrow of many good authors, 1647:

"Gods people shall not spare to call a spade a spade, a niggard a niggard."

The phrase is much older than that though. Nicolas Udall, in his Apophthegmes, that is to saie, prompte saiynges. First gathered by Erasmus - translated 1542, has:

"Philippus aunswered, that the Macedonians wer feloes of no fyne witte in their termes but altogether grosse, clubbyshe, and rusticall, as they whiche had not the witte to calle a spade by any other name then a spade."

This refers back to Plutarch's Apophthegmata, 178 BC.

As Henry Brooks Adams said, "No man means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous."

I'll be checking out phrases when I can before I turn them from now on, as my thoughts can be particularly viscous ... sometimes tacky, goofily glutinous, but rarely slimy, thankyouverymuch.