Judy in Huntsville, Alabama, has hundreds of song lyrics playing on auto-shuffle in her head. When the Polka Dot Polka started playing, she began to wonder how polka dots came to be associated with the music. It turns out that the polka dance craze of the early 1800s — named after the Polish word for a Polish woman — gave its name to a lot of things, including this fabric pattern. This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
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...