A Dallas, Texas, woman and her friends often use the expression All the things to mean something like and whatnot or as a way to signal a kind of mutual understanding, suggesting something similar to the phrase you know. This sense probably comes from a meme based on a post on Allison Brosch’s blog Hyperbole and a Half, which features a wild-eyed character vowing to Clean all the things! This joke has since transferred to the idea of energetically attacking an ambitious set of projects, and to the general notion of a lot of items or activities. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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