Theater reviews of newspapers are one of very valuable sources for me to fish for novel and intriguing expressions to foreign English learner like me.
Recently, I found two words quite strange to me in New York Times review of the new Broadway musical, "Catch Me if You Can," titled "Scamming as Fast as He Can." One is hot diggity, the other is corkscrew twists. Then I have the following two questions:
- I found the definition of hot diggity as an interjection expressing extra excitement or anticipation, and it came from the title of an American popular song written by Al Hoffman and Dick Manning in Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary.
How popular hot diggity is in day-to-day usage? What does it mean here? Is it something like "Oh my goodness!"? I suspect I can find this word in English language text book in school. Can I use it in formal conversation or in writing as quoted in the following text?
It is about scamming. Its central relationship is between two adversarial but bromantically bonded men. And, hot diggity, it is set in the booze-guzzling, chain-smoking, babe-chasing 1960s, an era that with the success of “Mad Men” on television has become Broadway’s decade du jour.
- I don’t understand the meaning of corkscrew twists in the following line of the same article. Can you explain me what it means?
Though the real-life story that inspired this show is full of elaborate deceptions and corkscrew twists, you will never at any point be confused by its theatrical incarnation.