Sherman from Harrodsburg, Kentucky, says her grandfather used to speak of accomplishing something physically challenging through main strength and awkwardness–in other words, through brute force and sheer determination. In the 1500s, English speakers used the expressions main force, main courage, and main logic, to suggest this idea of managing to do something through pure willpower or muscle, and without much finesse. By the mid-1800s, they got across the same idea with such phrases as main strength and stupidity, main strength and prodigious awkwardness, main strength and pure awkwardness, main strength and ambition, main strength and ignorance, main strength and stubbornness, main strength and roughness, and main strength and determination. This is part of a complete episode.
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...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Martha and Grant send occasional messages with language headlines, event announcements, linguistic tidbits, and episode reminders. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
