Responding to someone during a dispute with What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? is a way to deflect the comment or derail the discussion entirely. While the phrase the price of tea in China is the most common version, there’s...
Judy from Huntsville, Alabama, recalls her stepmother’s words of encouragement: He that hath a horn to toot and tooteth it not, the same shall not be tooted. This faux-formal bit of advice goes back at least to the 1850s. A variation goes: Toot your...
A professor who spent 25 years studying arthropods has some thoughts regarding our conversation about the phrase tight as a tick. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Technical Tick Tweak” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show...
The word conversation anagrams to voices rant on. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Conversation: Voices Rant On” You know you can take the word conversation and anagram it. It becomes voices rant on. Oh, that’s you and me. Oh, we...
Edward in Atlanta, Georgia, asks about the origin and uses of blah, blah, blah, the sing-song stand-in for omitted or tiresome talk. A single blah can mean dull or listless, as in “feeling blah,” while repeated blahs often replace words a speaker...
Wilson in Charleston, South Carolina, stopped using the term conversate after being told it’s not a real word. On the contrary, conversate is well-established in Black English as a verb that suggests speaking in a register that’s warmer, more...
