Mary Bell from Montgomery, Alabama, works in a doctor’s office where a hectic backlog of patients and appointments might elicit colleagues to say “We’re slammin’” or “We’re slammed.” The usage is familiar in restaurants and catering, where getting...
An Alabama woman says her Minnesota-born husband has never heard an expression she’s used all her life. The phrase is “smell the patching,” as in “If he’s not careful, he’s going to smell the patching.” The...
Cutting a rusty, heard in parts of the U.S. South, means acting up or doing something mildly outrageous, such as pulling a prank or shouting a naughty word. Fawn from Danville, Kentucky, learned it from a sister-in-law from Selma, Alabama. The noun...
Hissy fits, or frivolous tantrums often associated with girls, particularly in the Southern United States, probably derive from the word hysterical. An Alabama caller started thinking about the origin of this word after learning of the opening of a...
You might refer to those soft rolls of dust that collect under your bed as dust bunnies, dust kitties, or woolies, but in the Deep South they’re sometimes called house moss. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “House...
The legendary baseball announcer Red Barber is credited with popularizing the term the catbird seat, the enviable position in poker where you’re last to bet. James Thurber’s amusing story “The Catbird Seat” published in The...
