An Arkansas listener is puzzled when a neighbor notes that the weather turned off cold. This expression is part of a long-standing American dialect tradition that includes come off cold, come off hot, or turned off pretty. Such phrases show up...
The slang phrase someone ate and left no crumbs means the person did something really well. In a previous call, a listener who works in theater noted the use of ate to mean “did something well,” as in they really ate that haircut! This...
Comb graves, featuring two long slabs laid over the grave to form a peaked roof, are found in parts of the Southern United States, but primarily in Tennessee. Comb in this sense is an architectural word that refers to “the peak of a...
Why do we describe something that’s genuine or authentic as the real McCoy? It has nothing to do with trains or an inventor! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The True Origins of “the Real McCoy””...
A listener in Carmel, New York, remembers his father’s phrase knuckle down, screw bony tight, a challenge called out to someone particularly adept at playing marbles. The game of marbles, once wildly popular in the United States, is a rich...
The television show “Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-I n,” popular in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, was famous for awarding its goofy trophy, the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate. But the term fickle finger of fate is...