A month of Sundays, meaning “a long period,” or “longer than I can actually figure out,” goes at least as far back as the 1759 book The Life and Real Adventures of Hamilton Murray. This is part of a complete episode.
Which is the better term, recurrence or reoccurrence? A look at the corpus of American literature confirms that recurrence is far and away the more commonly used word denoting “something that occurs more than once.” This is part of a...
Downton Abbey, a program featured on Masterpiece Theater, provided a handful of colorful expressions that date surprisingly far back. “Like it or lump it,” meaning “deal with it,” is found at least as early as 1830 and takes...
Why are some American place names pronounced differently than the famous place they were named after? Why is Cairo, Ill., pronounced “KAY-roh”? Why do Midwesterners pronounce Versailles as “Ver-SALES” and the New Madrid Fault...
What’s for dinner? How about wind pudding, air sauce, and a side of balloon trimmings? This colorful euphemism for “nothing” dates as far back as the American Civil War, when troops would come into the mess tent, see a wild...
A listener named Meagan from Wisconsin uses the term flustrated, combining flustered and frustrated– one of many mashed together words she deems Meaganisms. Though Grant applauds her innovation and creativity, Martha points out that flustrate...