Does your family have a word for the cardboard tube left over from a roll of toilet paper? A caller says his family refers to them Oh-ah, Oh-ahs. Turns out many families have their own terms for them, including drit-drit, dawda dawda, hoo-hoo, to...
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...
By the way, if you want to read about more family words, check out Paul Dickson’s book, Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Paul Dickson’s Family Words...
An American cartographer for the United Nations reports that he and his British wife disagree over whether lollygolly is a real word that means “to dawdle.” Martha and Grant show the mapmaker where to draw the line. This is part of a...
leverite n. (also leaverite) a worthless stone or rock, especially one mistaken as being valuable. Editorial Note: Paul Dickson writes in Family Words (1998, p. 79), “Heaverite, according to Raymond J. Nelson of Cody, Wyoming, is a rock that...