Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
Perfect sentences and slang that tickles your mind! A new book of writing advice says a good sentence “imposes a logic on the world’s weirdness” and pares away options for meaning, word by word. • Your musician friend may refer to...
Marisa in Bellingham, Washington, was puzzled by a traffic sign in Massachusetts that read “Thickly Settled.” As far back as the 1830s, the term thickly settled was used in the Massachusetts legal code to refer to an area with many structures, such...
If you need a variation on the phrase “son of gun,” there’s always “son of a who cut your hair last.” It’s one of several colorful expressions that a San Diego listener’s great aunt used. Others include...
Pat in San Diego grew up in Gloucester, Massachusetts, with a Boston-area accent that people still notice even when no obvious “r” is involved. The accent’s hallmark is non-rhoticity: after certain vowels, the “r” may be weakened, changed, or...
We asked you to tell us about odd regional food names, and boy did you oblige! Martha reads some of your letters about whoopie pies, hot tamales, pretzel salad, coolers, and the frappe vs. milkshake controversy.
