Downton Abbey, a program featured on Masterpiece Theater, provided a handful of colorful expressions that date surprisingly far back. “Like it or lump it,” meaning “deal with it,” is found at least as early as 1830 and takes...
Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms — Martha and Grant swap stories about the games that first made them realize that playing with words and letters can be fun. Also this week, what’s a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts...
Tony from Charlottesville, Virginia, a translator, asked about the phrase in your wheelhouse, meaning well within your area of expertise. According to the Dickson Baseball Dictionary, the baseball term wheelhouse refers to the wheel motion of...
A listener shares a phrase he learned in Peru that translates as “more lost than a hard-boiled egg in ceviche.” It describes someone who’s lost or clueless. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Hard-Boiled Egg...
A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name unique to her family? This is part of a complete episode...
What’s happening linguistically when someone’s using the second-person singular possessive in a list of items? A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller began wondering that recently after hearing a wood-flooring salesperson say, “You got your...