Addie in Neenah, Wisconsin, seeks the origin of a word her grandfather used for gunk that gets stuck, such as a bit of food between one’s teeth. The dialectal term is likely ackempucky, which, according to the Dictionary of American Regional English, refers to any of various sticky liquid or pasty substances, such as the gunk that gets stuck in the threads of a plumbing pipe. Its etymology is unknown, it dates at least back to the 1930s, and it has a lot of other possible spellings: uckempucky, uckumpucky, ukkumpucky, akempucky, ackumpucky, ukempucky, ukumpucky, and akumpucky. This is part of a complete episode.
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
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