Grace in Abilene, Texas, says her grandmother, who was of German descent, would tell children to stop sulking or pouting with a word that sounded to Grace like “mooksie.” Her grandmother was probably using a form of the German dialectal terms mucksig or mucksch, which describe someone “sullen,” “sulking,” “moody,” or “defiant,” and are related to the verb muckschen meaning “to fuss.” In German, a child who is mucksig might express it with a pouty, protruding lower lip, which goes by the fanciful name Schippchen, literally “little shovel.” This is part of a complete episode.
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that...
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s? This...
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