Which is correct: close the lights or turn off the lights? They’re both fine. Rod from Tucson, Arizona, noticed that his Chinese-American wife and her siblings say close the light, which is a calque, or direct translation, from Cantonese. In fact...
A mixed-breed dog is sometimes called a bitsa, as in it’s made from “bits of this and bits of that.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A “Bitsa” Dog is Bits of This and Bits of That of that”” You know, we were talking...
When Mandy of San Antonio, Texas, was living in South Korea, her Newfoundland friend would call and ask, What are you at? and follow with I’ll come where you’re to. The phrasing is a well-known bit of Newfoundland English that means something like...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents his “Before and After” game, in which a pair of two-word phrases overlap on a shared word. For example, what do you get if you combine a fruity pastry with a part of a man’s throat? An Adam’s apple turnover, of course...
After a listener suggested that a phone dictation error might be called a mico, formed by analogy with typo, a Texas listener wrote to say that such autocorrect blunders are better referred to as autocorrupt. This is part of a complete episode...
When Bebe, a non-native English speaker in Charlotte, North Carolina, moved from England to the United States, she learned that a minor illness isn’t called the lurgy but the crud. In the 1700s, lurgy was used jokingly to refer to “a vague medical...