An Omaha, Nebraska, listener and wife have picked up the expression Bags not! from the Australian children’s show “Bluey.” The phrase is used to stake a claim by announcing one refuses to doing something undesirable, like change a diaper or take out the trash. The folklorists Iona and Peter Opie describe such phrases as part of the “code of oral legislation” by which children negotiate their rights with each other. 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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