Laura in New Bedford, Massachusetts, asks how offensive bloody is when her mother uses it as a swearish adjective, as in this bloody car won’t start. The force depends heavily on where you are: Jeffrey Hughes’s Encyclopedia of Swearing describes...
In this episode, books for word lovers, from a collection of curious words to some fun with Farsi. • Some people yell “Geronimo!” when they jump out of an airplane, but why? • We call something that heats air a heater, so why do we call...
A listener in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, recalls that his grandfather used to announce he was headed to the restroom by saying, “I have to go see a man about a horse.” An earlier version of the phrase is, “I have to go see a...
Go to grass is In the 1600s, go to grass meant to be knocked down. In the 1800s, the phrase was the equivalent of telling someone to die and go to hell. Go to grass has also been used to refer to a racehorse or working horse that’s been...
A Huntsville, Alabama, man finds that his younger co-workers have never heard the phrase going to hell in a handbasket. Although the expression is at least as old as the U.S. Civil War, its etymology remains unclear. In the early 1960s, the humorist...
In a discussion our Facebook group, a woman shares her mother-in-law’s favorite expression for fudging her age. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Fudging Your Age” We were talking earlier about euphemisms for age...