The noun piss, meaning “urine” and the verb piss, “to urinate,” may sound more crass than pee. But it wasn’t always that way. In the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, piss appears in the book of Isaiah and pisseth...
Seven-year-old Everett from Tallahassee, Florida, wants to know why we refer to a scrape or other minor injury as a boo-boo. Such reduplication of words and syllables is common in baby talk used to soothe a child. Also, boo-boo sounds a little like...
A new arrival to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is curious about a phrase used by her husband’s family: go do-do /DOH-doh/, for go to sleep. It’s from French dormir, to sleep. Grant recommends the Dictionary of Louisiana French: As Spoken in...
Boo, as in my boo for a sweetheart or other loved one, became especially visible in African-American speech and music in the mid-1990s, including in the song “My Boo” by Ghost Town DJs. The term is definitely older than that, though, and may have...
Why do we speak to babies in high pitched voices? Often our eyes grow wide, we give big smiles, and we talk in exaggerated, singsongy voices because these are the things that infants respond to. Chances are this parental cooing has gone on since...
What do you call it when you roll past a stop sign without coming to a complete stop? A California stop, a Michigan stop — or something else? And if someone calls you a voracious reader, would you be flattered or insulted? Also, Puddin’ Tame, the...