Breathe a Scab

A Traverse City, Michigan, man is curious about the phrase his mother-in-law uses: breathing a scab. She uses it to indicate that someone who’s pushing limits or otherwise on thin ice metaphorically. The phrase is far more commonly breeding a scab, and it describes someone whose behavior risks retaliation, such as a punch in the nose, that might actually leave a scab. This is part of a complete episode.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More from this show

Boodle on Beaver Island

A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...