“Holy old jumping up baldheaded!” is a colorful exclamation with ties to both Jesus of Nazareth and Gary Busey. (In Busey’s case, the phrase was Holy Jumped-Up Baldheaded Jesus Palamino.) This is part of a complete episode.
What do your pronouns say about your own psychological makeup? If you use the word I a lot, does it mean you’re a leader . . . or a follower? A surprising study suggests that people of lower status in a group tend to use I the most. Also, a...
The exclamation Fiddlesticks!, meaning “a trifle” or “something insignificant or absurd,” goes back to the time of Shakespeare. It endures in part because it’s fun to say. This is part of a complete episode.
Keep the ishpee out of your mouth. One caller’s parents used to shout “Ishpee!” when he or his siblings would try and eat dirt, marbles, or whatever they found on the floor. He wonders if this expression is unique to his family. It...
What’s the antidote to living in a sound-bite world? How about unwinding with luxuriously expressive prose? Also, the cloak-and-dagger world of editing dictionary entries. Plus, what you might say instead of cursing, and oddball Scrabble words...
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...