Jeff in Knoxville, Tennessee, is the only one in his family who remembers his grandmother’s card-table exclamation: For crying in a bucket! Whenever she got a bad hand in a game of crazy eights or king’s corners, she’d shout that instead of swearing...
In a lovely essay on the shared experience of theater audiences, Wesley Morris, critic at large for The New York Times, memorably describes weeping in the dark with fellow audience members as offering “applause with mucus and salt.” This...
In The Prodigal Tongue, linguist Lynne Murphy recounts the story of a friend from the US who was confused when her physician inquired about her waterworks. In Britain, that’s a slang term for the urinary tract, whereas in the US, it’s slang for...
Some knock-knock jokes stir the emotions, including: Knock-knock. Who’s there? Woo…. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Emotional Knock-Knock” Knock knock. Who’s there? Woo woohoo. Don’t get excited...
Looking for a word that denotes being really excited for someone, but also a little sad? One option is bittersweet, but if you’d like a term that’s not quite so overused, yayboo is taking hold online. The Modern Greek word charmolype...
A New York caller is incensed by the verb incent and a California listener is puzzled when his Southern relatives observe that his new baby is fixing to tune up whenever she’s about to start crying. This is part of a complete episode...
