The liked to in statements such as It started raining yesterday and liked to never stop is directly related to the word likely. The terms liked to and likedta used in this way reflect a British dialectal term that found its way into the speech of...
Debbie from Memphis, Tennessee, grew up in Arkansas, where she learned the term trade-last, which refers to “a quoted compliment offered in return for the recipient first offering one to the speaker.” Although those from the American South may...
Elizabeth in Burlington, Texas, says she always referred directly to her grandparents using their last names, as in Grandma and Grandpa Bell, or Grandma and Grandpa Van Hoose, but her husband calls his own grandparents Nanaw and Pawpaw. The...
Tim from Manhattan Beach, California, says his grandmother used to carry a brown paper bag and call it her poke sack. The word poke, in this case, means bag, making poke sack a pleonasm, which is an expression using more words than necessary to...
Rod from Dallas, Texas, recalls that when something wasn’t quite right, his favorite aunt, who was born and raised in Arkansas, would exclaim Don’t that just frost ya? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Don’t That Just Frost Ya?”...
You’uns, a dialectal form of the second-person plural, generally means “you and your kin.” The term is heard in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and much of the South, reflecting migration patterns of immigrants from the British Isles. It’s also...