Tagepisode.

Has a Horn and Doesn’t Toot It

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:...

Dialect Detecting

Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...

Spaceblob - How YOU Doin’?

How YOU Doin’?

There are traditional greetings, of course, like Good afternoon and How are you? But folks who know each other well often acknowledge each other with more creative, less formal greetings. They might ask How’re your feet and ears? or How are...

Invoice and Envoy

Scott in Madison, Wisconsin, is curious about the word invoice. It’s related to the English word envoy, and comes from French, envois, literally “things sent.” This is part of a complete episode.

Beware the Epizooty!

A Montana farmer says his dad used to warn against catching the epizooty. In 1872, an epizootic respiratory disease among horses nearly brought the United States to a standstill. The word epizootic is modeled on the Greek word epidemic, from Greek...