In Black English, the word trifling describes a person who lacks ambition or fails to keep promises. Former President Barack Obama used it that way in his memoir Dreams from My Father (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
To sell wolf tickets, or woof tickets, is to lie, bluff, brag, talk big, or challenge someone without really meaning to fight. The expression likely draws on the old tale of the boy who cried wolf, and known uses go back to the 1940s. The woof...
What’s the origin of the slang term book it!, meaning “depart quickly”? Since slang terms often cross-pollinate, it’s possible that by the 1960s and 1970s this expression formed at the confluence of three other slang terms:...
Semby from Los Angeles, California, asks about saditty, also spelled seditty or siditty, an African American English term for acting stuck up, putting on airs, or acting “better than your raisin.’” A related form, high-sididdy, carries the same...
Cecily from Indianapolis, Indiana, asks whether expressions she first heard in African-American English, such as hit us up and it’s been a minute, have long moved from minority communities into majority speech. Covert prestige describes the cultural...
Corey in Fort Worth noticed bougie in music and books and wondered how it moved from the Marx-era sense of bourgeois toward a slang insult. Bougie, also spelled boojee, is short for bourgeois and usually criticizes someone as showy, putting on airs...
