Status Updates From Dictionary of Fine Distinct...

What ultimately differentiates a kink from a fetish is simply whether it’s desired for arousal or required for arousal.

I cannot think of a single sarcastic statement that I would not also call ironic, suggesting (at least to me) that sarcasm is more a weaponized subcategory of irony than anything distinct.

Despite the humble meanings of trattoria and osteria, wily restaurateurs will often borrow these terms for their exotic twang, then charge you through the nose for it. Same goes for bistro, which originally denoted a smaller, more casual version of the French restaurant.

People often say that they looked it up in the OED when they probably just mean the ODE—unless, of course, they own all twenty volumes of the OED and plan to tell you how the word (which may be obsolete) has been used in every century since it was first recorded.

Yet at the same time, the onset of labor-saving machinery led many of these communities to shrink (rather than defer) those dinners, leading to a peculiar reversal in which dinner became smaller than supper, though many have stopped calling it dinner and conceded to the newfangled language of lunch.