Sierra in Salt Lake City says that smarts for a quick, sharp pain, is a phrase she picked up from her father and rarely hears from people her age. The word smart has meant a stinging or keen pain for about a thousand years, and that older sense long...
The Bangladeshi idiom translated as oiling your mustache in anticipation of the jackfruit tree bearing fruit roughly matches English don’t count your chickens before they hatch. The image depends on cultural context: jackfruit is juicy, a mustache...
A Marine stationed in California says that growing up in North Carolina, he understood the expression fixin’ to or fixing to to mean “to be about to.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Fixin’ To”...
A woman in Burlington, Vermont, says her mother used to use the expression land o’ Goshen! to express surprise or amazement. Where is Goshen? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Land o’ Goshen” Hello, you have...
A West Point graduate says he and fellow members of the military use the expression He has seen the elephant to mean “He’s seen combat.” Grant explains that this expression originated outside the military. This is part of a...
What’s the origin of word and word up? A theory in Geneva Smitherman’s Black Talk suggests they descend from the African American proverb your word is your bond, popularized in the 1960s by a splinter group from the Nation of Islam. Along the way...
