The British expression send to Coventry means “to ostracize,” and likely derives from the time of the English Civil War, when the town of Coventry served as a holding site for captured Royalist soldiers. By the 18th century, the phrase also came to...
After our conversation about nighttime wakefulness, a Sacramento, California, woman shares the funny story behind the term she and her husband use for that phenomenon: squeegee. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Nighttime...
When something’s blinky, it smells bad enough to make you blink. Spoiled pimento cheese, for example, can be blinky. The origin of blinky is uncertain, although it may derive from on the blink, as in “not working correctly.” This is part of a...
The term cheap-john can refer to a miserly fellow, and also to a pawnbroker’s shop. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Judge Wants To Spit” You remember when we were talking about that expression, order in the court, the monkey...
A listener says she and her husband called their unborn child “wohube.” What other noms de fetus are there? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Wohube” Every once in a while, Martha, we do a show about family words. We talk about the...
Does your family use a special word you’ve never heard anywhere else? A funny name for “the heel of a loaf of bread,” perhaps, or for “visiting relatives who won’t leave.” In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss “family words,” and Martha...
