When a listener from Buffalo, New York, was a child, she was told to stop being so rutschy, or in other words, to stop being so “fidgety.” Rutsch, meaning “to squirm,” and its variants, which include rooch and roosh, come from German rutschen, which means to “slip,” “slide,” or “slither,” and are heard primarily in areas of German settlement in the U.S. 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...
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.
