Alvin in Huntsville, Alabama, is a fan of the multipurpose noun chumpie, which he learned from a native Philadelphian. He remembers hearing it on the television show The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, when actor Will Smith, who is originally from Philadelphia himself, would say things like Yo! That chumpie is fly! Like the word jawn, which is also closely associated with Philadelphia, chumpie functions largely as a placeholder word that can be applied to lots of different things. The use of this slang term goes back at least to the 1980s and perhaps farther than that. In the early 1990s, a Black-owned Philadelphia company began producing Chumpies potato chips. This is part of a complete episode.
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Sean in Oneonta, New York, says that when he was growing up in New Jersey, his family would pile in the car and set off on a surprise adventure, whether a short distance or long, and the kids would be told only that they were going on Buxtehude...
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