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Reader question: Please explain “white flag”, as in this sentence: Caught between inflation, wage freezes and job insecurity, shoppers are running up the white flag on spending. My comments: Inflation means money is losing value because commodity prices are going up furious and fast. Wage freezes mean employees are not getting any raises. Job insecurity means people are afraid of losing their jobs, if not right now then perhaps sometime soon. Amid these gloomy concerns, people are cutting back on spending. They don’t go shopping as often and when they do, they don’t buy as much as before. Before, they might have bought whatever they wanted. Nowadays, they buy nothing but the essentials. And it’s no use asking them to shop and spend more because they’re raising the white flag on a pole. In other words, they’ve surrendered the cause. They’ve given up. They are accepting defeat. The white flag, you see, is a flag made of a piece of white cloth as a symbol of truce or surrender in a time of war. Dictionary.com suggests the white flag as we know it today came into use in 1590–1600, but ancient Chinese and Romans had used the white flag for the similar meaning. In the old days, messengers used to wave the white flag to signify that they’d come to talk rather than fight. In modern warfare, if soldiers raise the white flag while in battle, they mean to put down their arms and surrender, thus conceding defeat. | 
