Ryan Tomayko: How I explained REST to my wife.:

...Ryan: Yes, it is. Our brains are somehow smart enough to know that the same verbs can be applied to many different nouns. Some verbs are more specific than others and only apply to a small set of nouns. For instance, I can't drive a cup and I can't drink a car. But some verbs are almost universal like GET, PUT, and DELETE.

Wife: You can't DELETE a cup.

I also try to use real world analogies to explain geek things to people. I usually get stuck at finding appropriate metaphors for DELETE and COPY.