Holly from Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, remembers her grandmother loading family dinners with pepper and saying they wouldn’t get the pip. The pepper appears to be a folk-remedy flourish, not part of the word’s origin. The pip, also the pips, has...
Jane in Elk Park, North Carolina, grew up hearing her great-uncle say a misbehaving child was cutting a head shine—pulling some caper or carrying on in a noisy, comic way. The expression likely combines shine, used since at least the 1830s for a...
How do you know if it’s time to break up with a book? You’ve into the book 50, maybe a 100 pages, but you’re just not into it. Is there something wrong with quitting before the end? Tell us where you draw the line. This is part of a complete episode...
