“Well, Butter My Buns and call me a biscuit!” Martha and Grant talk about great catch phrases from old-time radio comedies. Also, why do we speak of a meteoric rise? Don’t meteors plummet? What do you keep in a Fibber McGee drawer? Plus, myriad vs...
News reports that the makers of Scrabble were changing the rules to allow proper names left some purists fuming. The rumors were false, but they got Grant thinking about idiosyncratic adaptations of the game’s rules. Also this week, the origins of...
Listeners emailed us in response to a call on the sonorous bow-chicka-wow-wow cliche, and we’re glad they did. We learned that country star Trace Adkins has a song called Brown Chicken, Brown Cow that uses puppets to demonstrate just what it means...
Well, shut my mouth and call me Shirley! Butter my buns and call me a biscuit! A listener shares several of these humorous imperatives. Grant explains that the roots of these phrases probably go back to the 1940s. Phil Harris, the bandleader on Jack...
“Imitation is the sincerest form of television,” said the radio comedian Fred Allen. Listeners are invited to share their favorite modern proverbs like this one, as well as their favorite classics. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
She's a pickin' and he's a grinnin'--it's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." Salut! Oh, hey, sure, it was a rerun this past weekend. A good one, though, with a brand-new word quiz to boot. It has the follow-up...
