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, wonders why we use the phrase right as rain to mean “all satisfactory” or “quite correct.” No one’s sure about the origin of this expression, although it may reflect positive associations with precipitation on...
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, pantod on the rummit, can’t...
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 Goat...
In French, there are colloquialisms translating to “the mayonnaise is setting” and “to make the mayonnaise rise.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Mayonnaise is Setting” While we were talking to Salem about the word mayonnaise...
Eudora Welty dropped the phrase man in the moon a couple times in her short story “Why I Live at the P.O.” The phrase doesn’t really reference the moon itself; it simply adds emphasis. Incidentally, seeing the image of a face or human figure in the...