When Julie and her sister were growing up in England and their grandmother saw them giggling over something, her grandmother would say You girls would laugh to see a pudding crawl! The phrase suggested that they’d laugh at anything. It evolved from an earlier expression It would vex a dog to see a pudding creep, suggesting the frustration of a hungry dog that has to stay back and watch a sausage while it cooks. 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...