When Bebe, a non-native English speaker in Charlotte, North Carolina, moved from England to the United States, she learned that a minor illness isn’t called the lurgy but the crud. In the 1700s, lurgy was used jokingly to refer to “a vague medical...
Amy from Charlotte, North Carolina, reports a dispute arose when visiting her brother’s family. Is a large container for storing sugar properly called a can or a canister? The answer involves prototype theory, which in cognitive linguistics and...
Melissa in Charlotte, North Carolina, remembers her grandfather would describe something excellent as better than snuff, but not near as dusty. The snuff in this case refers to finely ground smokeless tobacco. It arose at a time when snuff was...
If you’re described as a tall drink of water, or a a tall glass of water that’s a good thing. It suggests, especially for men, that you’re good-looking. A little more than a century ago, that phrase suggested a person was bland and boring, but it’s...
A Charlotte, North Carolina, shares her granddaughter’s adorable misunderstanding of a word. When a breeze was blowing, the little girl would say it’s winding (rhyming more or less with “wending” rather than...
An alcoholic who’s been sober for 29 years wonders if she’s overly sensitive to the terms non-alcoholic and alcohol-free being used with reference to food and drink. The problem is that alcoholic has more than one meaning. It can refer...
