Get out your skinny jeans and pass the PBR! Martha and Grant discuss the definition of the word hipster. Also, what happens when you pull a brodie? And why do we describe something cheap or poorly made as cheesy? Also, sawbucks, shoestring budgets...
From listener Richard Gaillard comes this question: I lived in North Carolina most of my life and in the North Carolina mountains for 11 years. Working as a carpenter I heard lots of slang terms. One exclamation (almost expletive) I heard often, and...
What do we mean by the expression “not to mince words”? The New York Times’ Paul Krugman often uses this idiom meaning “to be straightforward and blunt.” The verb mince means “to make small,” and is a...
What’s for dinner? How about wind pudding, air sauce, and a side of balloon trimmings? This colorful euphemism for “nothing” dates as far back as the American Civil War, when troops would come into the mess tent, see a wild...
porn mode n.— «With Version 3.5, Firefox joins most other modern browsers with the ability to run in a private browsing mode (often euphemistically knows as “porn mode”). When in this mode, the browser does not save data from the browsing...
Does your handwriting look like chicken scratches, calligraphy, or maybe something in between? Martha and Grant discuss the state of penmanship, the phenomenon linguists call creaky voice, euphemisms for going to the bathroom, and the New England...