Amir from Chicago, Illinois, grew up hearing the word brolic, meaning “extremely muscular, physically imposing” from his father, who grew up in the Farragut Projects in Brooklyn. The word has clear New York City roots, with an early notable appearance in a track from the Notorious B.I.G. album Long Kiss, where he rhymes brolic with alcoholic. From Biggie Smalls and hip-hop it migrated into weightlifting and bodybuilding communities. Curiously, French slang has an identical-sounding word, also from hip-hop, also appearing around the same time, but in French, where brolic means armed with a gun, likely derived from calibre spelled backward. The two words, with the same sound, both about masculinity, arriving independently on opposite sides of the Atlantic in different flavors of hip-hop are probably a coincidence, but who can say for sure? This is part of a complete episode.
Those green plastic strips tucked between cuts of meat in supermarket display cases? They’re parsley runners, the result of recommendations from a professional color consultant hired by a grocery chain in the 1950s. Under bright store lights, the...
Daniel from Gardnerville, Nevada, remembers his aunt had a habit of responding to anyone who left the word so hanging there in mid-conversation with, Sew a button on your underwear. It’s is one of a whole family of playful rejoinders, including Sew...
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