James is from southwest Michigan, which was heavily settled by the Dutch. He grew up using the adjective logy, meaning “lethargic,” and was surprised to learn that friends from elsewhere didn’t know the word. He wonders if he knows...
Danielle from Wells, Vermont, wonders if there’s a difference between a possum and an opossum. Scientifically speaking, they’re two different animals. The word opossum comes from a similar-sounding Algonquian term that translates as...
Bekkah in Wimberly, Texas, says her grandmother would express surprise with the phrase Well, my foot! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Well, My Foot!” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Becca. I’m...
Barbara in Norfolk, Virginia, wonders about the drawl of Southern American English. A great resource on how people perceive others’ dialects is the work of linguist Dennis Preston and his book Perceptual Dialectology. This is part of a...
Jesse from Louisville, Kentucky, wonders if the second-person plural pronoun y’all is becoming more popular throughout the United States. A 2000 article in the Journal of English Linguistics finds that y’all and you-all are indeed spreading beyond...
Amber in Mansfield, Texas, has a friend from London, England. After she moved to the States, the friend was surprised to find that when she’s conversing with strangers from the United States, they’ll drop in what Americans think of as...