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, meaning some “undetermined place.” There’s a small town in Germany called Buxtehude, and Germans use the expression aus Buxtehude to mean “from the boondocks” or “in the middle of nowhere.” The town also figures in the story of “The Hare and the Hedgehog” from Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Bookshop|Amazon). Buxtehude is also fancifully described as the place where dogs bark with their tails. 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...
Joan from Augusta, Georgia, says her grandfather used to pronounce the word onions as if they were spelled ernions. The word onion is adapted from the French cognate oignon, and thanks to variations in dialect, geography, and other factors, this...
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