Cartoon : A Time-Honored Maxim

- If something is time-honored such as a maxim or a tradition, it is respected or adhered to because of its age or long-usage.

- A lender is someone you lends you money. In other words, he or she gives you money that you have to pay back, sometimes with interest. A bank is often such a lender. The money that a friend or a bank lends you is called a loan.

- If you ask someone to lend you money that you promise to pay back, then you are called the borrower because you borrow money.

- ‘Plain old’ is common adjective combination to describe something that is not unusual or special. For example, you walk in a coffee shop that proposes all sorts of strange and flavored coffee combinations but you don’t want any of these new and strange flavors; you just want a simple coffee, so you could say, “I just want a plain old coffee, please.” In the maxim used in the cartoon, you could say that it’s just plain old common sense.

- If you describe someone as being cagey, you are saying that they are clever and cannot be deceived or trapped. They don’t want to commit themselves to something. In the cartoon, Momma tries to teach the boy an age old lesson about money, but he replies with a cagey answer completely avoiding it. Sometimes public officials are cagey when they talk to journalists so as not to get trapped into giving answers or details that are too specific. As consumers, we have to sometimes be cagey so as not to be trapped into buying something we only think we need.