When a proper Southern lady fans herself and exclaims, “I do believe I have the vapors,” what vapors is she talking about, exactly? A caller from Austin, Texas wants to know the origin of this term. Just how did it come to apply to a whole range of things, from being flustered all the way to more serious maladies such as depression and hypochondria? This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...
A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...