Mary in Charlotte, North Carolina, says that her parents used to refer to the time before she was born as back when you were chasing flies in Egypt, the equivalent of when you were just a twinkle in your mama’s eye or twinkle in your daddy’s eye. In The Front Room Boys the playwright Alez Buzo renders this idea as when you were a dirty look. In Australia, the same job is done by the phrase when you were still running up and down your father’s backbone. In Turkish, the expression Piyasada yoktun translates as “You weren’t in the market then,” means something similar. In Italian, there’s the poetic Eri ancora nel mondo della luna, which means “You were still in the world of the moon.” This is part of a complete episode.
After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New...
Debbie from Crawfordsville, Florida, says that when she and her husband reach an impasse while working on something, they’ll say Let’s grok about it, which they use to mean “Let’s think about it.” Grok was coined by...
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