Matt in Beloit, Wisconsin, reports that when he was in high school back in the 1990s, he and his friends used the word biscuit in phrases like I feel like a biscuit or I bet you feel like a biscuit now, the idea being that someone said something...
Jackie in Wausau, Wisconsin, says her family used an odd word whenever someone took a sip and choked. She’s not seen it in print, but suspects it’d be spelled something like furschluk. The family’s word is likely adapted from German verschlucken...
Martha recently found a 1938 letter that her grandfather sent to the local police chief in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. It concerns a suspected thief who her grandfather thought might be persuaded to confess because, he wrote,, the young man surely...
In this bonus A Way with Words minicast, Martha and Grant look into the myriad stories behind the word cocktail. Does the drink name come from feathers? Horses? Something up a horse’s rump? It’s a weird wandering down etymology lane… This minicast...
The phrase potatoes and point involves a family tradition from times of scarcity when eaters would point to an imaginary food and ask for it to be passed when there was clearly no such food to be had. Irish sources trace potatoes and point to the...
At a South African boarding school, Rob picked up a phrase from Afrikaans that translates to land with your bum in the butter, meaning “to be lucky.” There are several variations in English — often with other words for “bum”, like “ass” or “arse” —...