Will, an emergency medical technician in Queens, New York, offers this bit of lingo from his line of work: skell, meaning a “lowlife.” In South African slang, the word skelm means the same thing. Will and his colleagues also use the term skell gel to mean “hand sanitizer.” The 17th-century English term skelder meant “someone who would feign an injury in order to be a more effective panhandler or con artist.” This word likely isn’t related to modern skell because there’s a centuries-long gap between its use then and when skell pops up in Brooklyn in the mid-20th century. 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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