If you’re sitting on a subway or airplane seat and someone’s invading your space, you can always offer the colorful rebuke “Lean on your own breakfast,” meaning “straighten up and move over.” This is part of a...
A listener in Brazil wants to know about the source of the phrase keeping up with the Joneses, which refers to trying to compete with others in terms of possessions and social status. This expression was popularized by a comic strip with the same...
If you think the city of Riga, New York, is pronounced like the city in Latvia, think again. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Riga” A couple more surprising town names from new york state do you know how you pronounce...
A Palmyra, Indiana, listener observes that in online discussions of Pokémon Go, Americans and French-speaking Canadians alike use the word lit to describe an area of town where lots of people playing the game. This is part of a complete episode...
To encourage diners to dig into a delicious meal, an Italian might say mangia!, a French person bon appetit! and Spaniard would say buen provecho. But English doesn’t seem to have its own phrase that does the job in quite the same way. This is...
A Los Angeles, California, listener says his grandmother, a native Spanish-speaker, used the word filibustero to mean “ruffians.” Any relation to the English word filibuster? As a matter of fact, yes. This is part of a complete episode...