booya
interj.— «Awaiting trial on grand theft charges, Thomas allegedly flashed a gang hand sign at the deputy and said, “It’s the last thing you’ll see in the back window of your car before you hear ‘booya, booya.’” “Booya” is gang slang for gunfire.» —“2 Charged Under New Terrorist Threat Law” by Howard Blume Los Angeles Times Jan. 6, 1989. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A listener named Tami contacted the show by WhatsApp to say that whenever someone would be talking about a subject that nobody else knew anything about, her father-in-law would respond with I had one of those, but the wheels came off. This is part...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...