Daniel, just outside Penetanguishene, Ontario, grew up in a family with Oklahoma Cherokee ties and heard his grandfather call himself Black Dutch, apparently to deny Native ancestry in a racist setting. The term is a knotty racial descriptor...
Are you left hanging by the invitation “Do you want to come with?” A Milwaukee native is proud of this regionalism, which means “Do you want to come along?” Grant explains that it may be related to the German verb mitkommen...
See the cute little boy making the kissy face on the page for our latest episode? That’s Grant’s son, whom you’ve heard him mention on the show. Guthrie’s now about twice as old as he was then and he’ll be heading to...
Skyscraper makes literal sense once you picture a head scraping the sky, the image Alice in Carlsbad, California saw when comparing herself with her cat. Before it meant a tall building, skyscraper referred to the topmost sail on a sailing ship...
Hi, ho! In this week’s episode, we discuss odd words, how children learn to talk, “in my wheelhouse,” “high as Cooter Brown,” and “good leather.” Greg Pliska metagrobolizes us with a quiz based on the 2011...
Simon Ager’s site Omniglot.com is stacked with full-deckisms from around the world. In English-speaking countries, someone who’s not quite with it is said to be “two sandwiches short of a picnic.” In Germany, however, this is...