Wendy from Charlotte, North Carolina, was baffled when a co-worker asked, Are you ready to race for pinks? The phrase racing for pinks refers to participating in car races where the winner gets ownership of a car, the pinks referring to the pink-colored page in a multi-part document conferring the car’s title. The pink slip mentioned when someone is let go from a job refers to pink interoffice memo pages, that color signaling a message that’s more urgent than messages on white paper. This is part of a complete episode.
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...
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The pink document for car ownership is mentioned in the Beach Boys’ song “Little Deuce Coupe”:
And if that ain’t enough to make you flip your lid
There’s one more thing, I got the pink slip, daddy