Victoria in Madison, Wisconsin, is curious about saying something is a thing, meaning that a particular phenomenon exists or is genuine. This phrase has been around since at least the time of Jane Austen, who used it in Pride and Prejudice. Other phrases involving the word thing include my thing is meaning “what concerns me is” and the thing of it is meaning something along the lines of “the most significant element is.” 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...