David says that when he was growing up in Akron, Ohio, his family referred to the grassy area between the sidewalk and street as the devil strip. He’s since moved to Nashville, Tennessee, where he doesn’t hear that term. There are lots of terms for...
Debra, who teaches eighth graders in San Antonio, Texas, says some of them use the expression spill the tea meaning “spill the beans” or “share gossip.” The earliest version of this phrase, which appears in print in the early 1990s, was spill the T...
A roofer in Virginia Beach, Virginia, has a dispute with his boss over how to pronounce the word roof. Most people pronounce roof to rhyme with the word proof, but some pronounce like the word rough and some pronounce it to rhyme with hoof. This is...
You might refer to those soft rolls of dust that collect under your bed as dust bunnies, dust kitties, or woolies, but in the Deep South they’re sometimes called house moss. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “House Moss” Grant, what...
lining out n.— «Though from central Scotland, the band have used Gaelic in their name (Dubh means black). This is a link to the claims of the similarities between Gaelic psalms and pre-blues gospel and spiritual music of black American culture...
