It’s not uncommon to wonder whether an advertiser’s claims about a product can really be trusted. In a discussion about whether a product was likely to be as effective as the advertisers claimed, I had made a comment that went something like, “Well, it sounds 
good, but you won’t know until you try it yourself whether it’s going to perform up to snuff.” The comment came to mind again recently, and it occurred to me that I’ve used that expression at various points for as long as I can remember and never once questioned why I would choose such a phrase or what it really meant. I had heard about “snuff,” of course, but I never tried it myself. On the subject of snuff, I was woefully Continue reading
used to report a reaction to an event or to predict the impact of an upcoming one, it conveys the image of something outside the normal range. We hear the word used around church gatherings a lot, but rarely does anyone 
predictable movie scene. For instance, there’s the one in so many Christmas movies where one of the lead characters became Christmas-avoidant and Grinch-like because of something awful that happened on Christmas Eve. Maybe he hates Christmas because in the midst of proposing to the love of his life on Christmas Eve, a rabid skunk leaped out of the shrubbery and sprayed her, causing her to 
seats between adults who seemed to derive some strange pleasure from inflicting pain on helpless kids. I discovered that just when the inescapable barrage of other church words being hurled at us was about to squeeze the last gasp of air right out of my lungs and alert the death angel to Recent Comments
