Joey from Orono, Minnesota, has been learning Italian and its many idioms, which makes him wonder if there are other languages that can simply be learned in a classroom without input from a larger cultural context of new and evolving expressions...
Jeffrey in New Bern, North Carolina, asks why right as rain means “all correct.” The expression goes back to at least the late 19th century, and it long outlasted similar alliterative phrases like right as the bank and right as nails. No one knows...
Gabrielle in Beloit, Michigan, asks why the closure on trousers is called a fly when the word more commonly names an insect or the act of moving through the air. In clothing, fly first meant the overlapping cloth flap that covers the opening, not...
A Texas caller says her West Virginia-born mother uses the word hornicaboogery to mean “germs” or “the creeping crud.” Among the many such joking names for imaginary illnesses are gollywobbles, collywobbles, carlymarbles...
Rose works at a trailer shop south central Pennsylvania and often hears her co-workers adding the element -couple to a round number to indicate an indefinite amount, such as “bring me twenty-couple screws,” in the same way that others...
Goat rope, goat roping, and goat rodeo describe a messy, disorganized situation. Grant wrote about these terms in his book The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “As Disorganized as a...