Marian from Schroon Lake, New York, says her family plays an egg-tapping game after every Easter egg hunt. Each player takes an egg and taps it against someone else’s, hoping that their own egg won’t crack. The egg that survives a round...
Here’s a word to use each New Year’s Day: quaaltagh. It’s pronounced QUAL-tok, and comes from the Isle of Man. It means “the first person to show up at your door on the first day of the year” or “the first person...
Ash from Arlington, Texas, says her great-aunt would refer to a red bump on one’s tongue as a lie bump. This expression is widespread enough to be used in medical textbooks, although papillitis is the official term, papillae being the...
Irv in Putnam Station, New York, recalls his mother used to refer to a dismal, rainy day as a lowry, or lowery, day. What she probably meant is lowering, which describes a dark, foreboding sky, and may derive from a Germanic word that has to do with...
Jody calls are military cadences based on the exploits of Jody, an imaginary character blamed for all the things that might go wrong back home while a soldier is deployed, such as losing one’s girlfriend or car. In a master’s thesis...
John from Bremerton, Washington, is puzzled by a radio announcer’s use of the hortatory phrase Powder River! Let ’er buck! The rollicking, rootin’-tootin’ story of this phrase is told in Western Words: A Dictionary of the American West, an...