If you say you can’t accomplish a task, someone might remind you “Mr. Can’t died in a cornfield.” This old saying is particularly evocative if you’ve ever been stuck in a cornfield, because it’s easy to think you won’t make it out. Another version of this phrase is “can’t died in the poorhouse.” This is part of a complete episode.
Here’s the full poem from a 1910 issue of St. Nicholas, a children’s magazine.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
