Grammar Girl here. I'm In Yon Foghuryty, your friendly guide to the English language.

Today, we're going to talk about tricky uses of the word epicenter and about the origin of the words brother and bro.

But first, I have a quick follow-up to our piece on idioms with the word dime last week,

because my husband tells me we missed a big one.

During the Drop a Dime section, he said it kept waiting for me to talk about basketball.

So the Oxford English Dictionary says that the basketball use of Drop a Dime is chiefly North American and goes all the way back to

1988. It means to make a precise or well-timed pass to a teammate for a shot at the basket.

So it's essentially an assist. And it's expanded to use in other sports too. Thanks, Pat.

I recently asked my social media followers how they felt about

the use of the word epicenter in two sentences, one positive and one negative. The positive

sentence said the cafe was the epicenter of the neighborhood's social life. And the negative

sentence said Wall Street was the epicenter of the financial's social life. And the negative sentence said Wall Street was the epicenter

of the financial crisis in 2008. I wanted to know if people thought one use was more acceptable

than the other in formal writing, like in a press release or report. Episcenter originally

described the point on the earth's surface directly above an

earthquake's focus, but it started taking on metaphorical meaning around 1900, and literary folks

have been arguing about it ever since. One question has been whether it's okay to use

epicenter for anything other than earthquakes,

but there's a second thornyer question.

Since earthquakes are bad, should people stick to using epicenter just for bad things?

And the response has surprised me.

As a group, my social media followers seemed less accepting of epicenter in the

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