Snout-fair means “good-looking person,” throttlebottom is a “dishonest public official,” and “ejectamenta” refers to “material ejected from a volcano.” Christine sent 31 such rare and obsolete words from Delafield, Wisconsin. She belongs to the...
Should people living with cancer be referred to as cancer survivors? Mary from Delafield, Wisconsin, a breast cancer survivor herself, doesn’t like the term. Nor does Indiana University professor emerita Susan Gubar, who discusses this in an...
Is that a winklehawk in your pants? A listener shares this word for those L-shaped rips in your trousers, from an old Dutch term for “a carpenter’s L-shaped tool.” And Grant has a new favorite term, motherwit, meaning “the...

