That time I made my mom guess the meaning of English expressions

After Uganda's president said he and Queen Elizabeth were 'friends with mutual benefits', I was inspired to investigate some other confusing idioms

Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, recently tweeted that he and Queen Elizabeth II were "friends with mutual benefits". I sympathize: English expressions are confusing, some of them feel almost deliberately obscure - designed to exclude non-native speakers from the joke.

Museveni later deleted his tweet. I wish he hadn't. We should celebrate linguistic ambiguity and explore the universe of meanings in words.