A listener who grew up in Newfoundland remembers her grandfather declaring the fog was thick as burgoo. Turns out burgoo was sailors’ slang for a gray, gelatinous oatmeal—exactly the right image for an impenetrable Newfoundland fog. The word appears...
A newscaster covering treacherous driving conditions offered this advice: Keep it between the mustard and the mayo. In other words, “Make sure your car stays between the yellow line and the white line on the road.” This is part of a complete episode...
The lovely Icelandic word for “ground fog,” dalalæða, comes from dalur, meaning “valley” and læða which is variously translated as “sneak up” or “female cat.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dalalæða, Icelandic Ground Fog” Grant...
Jacob in Frankfort, Kentucky, remembers that on foggy mornings in Appalachia, he’d hear grownups say that the groundhogs are making coffee. Writer Jesse Stuart, who served as Kentucky’s Poet Laureate in the mid-1950s, wrote evocatively about how on...
Claggy, a regional UK weather word, originally meant a thick, low-level cloud, damp, overcast, foggy, or misty. Because it comes from an old word having to do with sticky things, it also came to describe air that feels unpleasantly close and humid...
Insensible losses, in the world of medicine, are things your body loses which you simply don’t sense. A prime example is the water vapor you see coming out of your body when you exhale in cold weather, but aren’t aware of when it’s warmer out. This...
