When two people can’t gee-haw together, it means they don’t get along. The terms gee-haw, or gee and haw, come from farming, where a trained animal obeys a command to go left or right–to gee or haw, in other words. Noncompliant...
Giving your baby an unusual moniker may seem like a great idea at the time. But what if you have second thoughts? One mother of a newborn had such bad namer’s remorse, she poured out her heart to strangers online. Speaking of mothers and...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski have a game matching people with their animal kingdom counterparts. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Animal Kingdom Counterparts Quiz” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about...
Anne in Amherst, Massachusetts, remembers a family euphemism from her proper grandmother, born in 1869: instead of saying bull, she said the animal. That exact wording may have been her own, but the impulse fit a larger late-19th- and early-20th...
In China, dogs say wang wang instead of woof woof. Wikipedia has a great list of such cross-linguistic onomatopoeias. Of course, we all know what the fox says. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Dog Says “Wang...
An adult male opossum is called a jack, while the female’s called a jill. A baby opossum is simply known as cute. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Jacks and Jills” Grant, an adult male possum is called a Jack. Can...