A listener remembers her mother used to say, “Your Monday is longer than your Tuesday.” This phrase offered a subtle way to notify someone that her slip was showing. Other expressions convey that warning as well, including “Monday...
Greg Pliska, musical director for the Broadway show War Horse and our very own Quiz Guy, has a puzzle about Animal Hybrid Phrases combining two common expressions involving animals. For example, what do you get when stuffed animal stocks go down? A...
What’s the origin of the expressions “word!” and “word up!”? Grant shares a theory from the book Black Talk by Geneva Smitherman. Here’s that Eighties-era song
A Wellesley College student has been reading about the Victorian fear of being buried alive—also known as taphophobia—and the bizarre 19th-century burial practices associated with it. She’s heard that they gave rise to such expressions as dead...
A Green Bay, Wisconsin, caller is curious about her mother’s playful interjections. If someone said, “Well,” her mother would add, “Well, well. Three holes in the ground.” If someone started a sentence with...
Two more expressions that characterized 2009: El Stiffo and “drive like a Cullen.” This is part of a complete episode.