A listener shares her grandfather’s funny saying. It’s a series of logical statements, but when pronounced very quickly it can sound like some sort of Latin incantation: In mud eels are / In clay none are / In pine tar is / In oak none is. In The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes (Bookshop|Amazon), folklorists Iona and Peter Opie show that there are lots of versions of this saying — including one in a medical manuscript from 500 years ago! Two other lines that sometimes accompany this saying are Goat eat ivy / Mare eat oats, the inspiration for the 1940s novelty song “Mairzy Doats.”This is part of a complete episode.
In the 1970s, talk-show host Johnny Carson had a recurring bit where he’d declare, “It was so cold…” to which the audience would respond, “How cold was it?” Carson always offered a goofy response, such as “It was so cold the ice cubes were wearing...
Lindsay in San Diego, California, says some of her younger coworkers use the phrase out of pocket to mean “unavailable,” but she’s also heard it used to mean “acting out of line.” The meaning of this phrase usually involves one of three things...
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