High school students in Alabama share some favorite slang terms. If someone tells you to touch grass, they’re telling you to get a reality check — but the last thing you’d actually want to touch is dog water! Also, the history of the word hangover...
We tend to take the index of a book for granted, but centuries ago, these helpful lists were viewed with suspicion. Some even worried that indexes would harm reading comprehension! A witty new book tells the story. Plus, the Latin term bona fides...
An acclaimed poet’s tender poem about holding a newborn for the first time reflects a complex swirl of emotions. And: A caller finds that in her workplace, the expression out of pocket can mean very different things: either “being unavailable” or...
Lindsay in San Diego, California, says some of her younger coworkers use the phrase out of pocket to mean “unavailable,” but she’s also heard it used to mean “acting out of line.” The meaning of this phrase usually involves one of three things...
C’mere—the quick, reduced version of Come here—is an example of what linguists call an allegro form, a sped-up, casual pronunciation or spelling created through phonetic reduction. The lento form, in contrast, is the longer version. In musical...
A caller who grew up in Wisconsin says his spouse, who’s from Florida, teases him for such things as pronouncing bagel like “BEG-el” and dagger as “DEG-ger.” They’re just products of his isolect, the regional variants from his particular dialect of...