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.
The cardboard cylinder left after the last sheet of toilet, tissue, or wrapping paper comes off the roll has inspired families to make up a lot of names for the tube or the sounds you can make with it. These include oh-ah, oh-ah, drit-drit, dah-dah...
A native Texan says his Canadian wife teases him about his use of hitten for a past participle, as in You have hitten every green light instead of You have hit every green light. Charles Mackay’s 1888 work, A Dictionary of Lowland Scotch, does...
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