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.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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