Robert in Dover, Delaware, grew up hearing different ways to say aunt, from the version that sounds like ant to the same broader vowel as in haunt common in parts of the East Coast. In most of the United States, aunt rhymes with ant. The other...
Liz from San Antonio, Texas, has noticed going west in World War I-era poems, letters, and accounts, usually meaning to die or be killed in combat. The euphemism go west is older than the war and is especially associated with writing from Scotland...
Scott from Copper Canyon, Texas, wonders about a expression he heard from his childhood in the American South: neat but not gaudy. He understood it to mean appropriate, but not over the top. The expression goes back to 1600s and has many variations...
The origin of skedaddle, meaning to “run away in a panic” or “flee,” has proved elusive. Renowned etymologist Anatoly Liberman suggests it may be related to a Scottish term, skeindaddle, meaning “to spill.” Its popularity in the United States took...
You’uns is a dialectal second-person plural meaning roughly “you and yours,” including family, household, or close companions. Angelina in western Montana heard it from longtime neighbors in northwest Arkansas after growing up with y’all in Dallas...
Growing up in Jamaica, a woman used to hear her fashion-designer mother invoke this phrase to indicate that something was good enough, even if it was flawed: “A man on a galloping horse wouldn’t see it.” Variations include “it’ll never be seen on a...