David from Kalamazoo, Michigan, is a former truck driver who remembers that his fellow users of CB radio tended to sound similar, no matter what part of the country they were from. Is there such a thing as an occupational accent? Many of those truck drivers sound like Jerry Reed from the 1977 movie “Smokey and the Bandit,” and C.W. McCall’s 1975 song “Convoy.” You can find lots of other samples of CB radio chatter on archive.org. People involved in the same enterprise, such as airline pilots and air-traffic controllers, will begin to develop similar patterns of speech. This is part of a complete episode.
When a British tabloid reporter writing about a crocodile attack needed a synonym for crocodile, he went with knobbly monster, now a joking term for similarly creative ways of avoiding repetition. Juliet and Matthew Maguire, described by The...
Sara in Camden, New Jersey, wants a word for those people who are more than acquaintances, but not quite friends. She calls them friendlies, but wonders if there’s a better term. Fracquaintance, maybe? The Danish band Mew has an album called...
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