Jacob in Frankfort, Kentucky, remembers that on foggy mornings in Appalachia, he’d hear grownups say that the groundhogs are making coffee. Writer Jesse Stuart, who served as Kentucky’s Poet Laureate in the mid-1950s, wrote evocatively about how on...
Following up on our conversation about terms for “weak coffee,” a listener in Mexico reports that there, such a beverage is sometimes called agua de calcetín or “sock water.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Agua De Calcetín”...
Following up on conversation about words for weak coffee, Carol in Wilmington, North Carolina reports that her mother-in-law’s term for strong, boiling-hot coffee is punished water. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Water in a Dunce...
Marissa in Tallahassee, Florida, is puzzled when a friend observes that coffee goes through her like salts through a widow-woman, meaning that the beverage makes its way swiftly through her digestive system. The expression, which has been around...
Listeners are sharing their favorite terms for coffee that’s weak, including warm wet, branch water, pond water, scared water, and in the immortal words of Ani DiFranco, just water dressed in brown. One listener has a friend in North Dakota who...
In parts of Appalachia, really weak coffee is sometimes referred to as scared water. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Scared Water” In parts of Appalachia, if you want to describe coffee that’s really weak, you can describe it as...
