Nancy Gabriel from Ithaca, New York, recalls her father’s no-nonsense responses to minor injuries when she was a child: After making sure she was really all right, he’d say, It’s far enough from your heart; it won’t kill you. Other times he might...
Andres from Washington Heights, New York, heard a radio report suggesting that the same anatomy that lets humans speak also makes us vulnerable to choking, and he wanted to know more. The answer lies in the physical trade-off that sets humans apart...
Margie from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, says that sometimes her childhood behavior scared the daylights out of her mother, but she never understood exactly what that actually meant beyond giving her mother a terrible fright. In the past, the word...
During a live appearance on Louisiana’s Red River Radio, a listener introduced Martha to a phrase worth savoring: when the moistures meet. In the world of traditional farming, where the moistures meet refers to the moment when soil moisture and...
Matt from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was puzzled when colleagues kept saying someone had stood up at a wedding, indicating that they’d been a member of the wedding party. The expression stood up in that sense is an Americanism going back about two...
Susan from Virginia Beach, Virginia, shares the phrase her mother used when the kids refused to eat: It’ll grow hair on your back teeth. This supposed motivator likely blends two older traditions: a German idiom, Haare auf den Zähnen haben...