Jasmine from Miami, Florida, asks about the word boo as a term of endearment, as in Alicia Keys’ song “My Boo.” This use of boo has been especially common in Black English since the 1980s, occupying the same affectionate space as honey or baby. The...
Have you heard of carspreading? It’s like manspreading but for vehicles, cars that take up more and more space and refuse to yield. The term is gaining traction in urban planning circles, particularly in Europe, where studies show new cars are...
Roderick in Jacksonville, Florida, says patients in his cardiac electrophysiology practice often look at the tangle of EKG wires on their chests and joke that now they’re wired for sound. What’s the origin of this phrase? Although to wire meaning...
In this week’s puzzle, Quiz Guy John Chaneski changes a single letter in the title of a popular musical to create a new word and a new show, then lists altered songs from the new cast album and challenges you to guess the name of the musical. For...
Stotting describes rain so heavy that it bounces on the sidewalk. In Northern England, a stotting ball or stotty ball is a rubber ball. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of ““Stotting” Means Bouncing Rain in Northern England” Here’s...
Kim from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, remembers her Alabama-born mother asking, Where are you proging today? The word progue, also spelled prog, is a bit of dialect meaning “to poke around” or “to ramble.” In the UK, this word, from a Germanic root...
