Clabberhead is a mild rebuke that suggests someone has a curdled dairy product for brains, clabber being sour milk, ultimately from an Irish Gaelic term for “mud.” The Dictionary of American Regional English has a good history of clabberhead. In Good Words to You (Amazon), the poet, translator, NPR commentator, and critic John Ciardi listed several similar workplace-safe insults, including chowderhead, churnhead, puddinghead, meathead, and mush head. All imply that someone is pulpy-brained. This is part of a complete episode.
If you’re going to hit the road in a motor home, best to bone up on some of the slang used by RV enthusiasts, like stinky slinky, PUPs, and gassers. A stinky slinky is a sewer hose, a PUP is a pop-up camper, and a gasser is a motor home powered by...
A listener in Lorain, Ohio, wonders about the origin of the terms happy and happiness. Both come from an older word hap, meaning “chance” or “luck,” also the source of happen, mishap, hapless, happenstance, happy-go-lucky, and perhaps. Language...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Your co-hosts Martha and Grant send occasional fun messages with language headlines, event announcements, interesting linguistic tidbits, and new episode links. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
