Sam from St. Paul, Minnesota, says his dad often used the expressions Do you think I just fell off the turnip truck? and I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, meaning “I’m not naive” or “Do you think I was born yesterday?” Turnips have long been associated with supposedly unsophisticated rustic folk, and the phrase fall off the turnip truck conjures an image of country bumpkins piling into the back of a truck to bring their crop to market in the big city. During his years on The Tonight Show, TV talk-show host Johnny Carson often used this alliterative phrase. There are a lot of variants, including cabbage truck and turnip wagon. This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...