Shut your piehole! means “Shut your mouth!” Dave in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, heard it during a tense exchange at a mechanic’s shop. Piehole appears to be a U.S. offshoot of the older cakehole, recorded from the 1940s and likely associated with British...
Books for language lovers include Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher’s lay-friendly tour of research on language and thought, and OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, Allan...
Sandy from Fort Worth grew up hearing Oklahoma relatives call dragonflies snake doctors. It isn’t just a family expression: snake doctor is a traditional folk name, tied to an old tale that dragonflies follow snakes and sew them up when they’re hurt...
A shivaree, also spelled charivari, is a raucous, good-natured hazing for newlyweds. A discussion here about that word prompted lots of listeners to write in with their own stories about shivarees. Martha shares some of them. This is part of a...
Are fairy tales too scary for children? A survey of parents in Britain found that more than half wouldn’t read them to their children before age five. Martha and Grant discuss the grisly imagery in fairy tales, and whether they’re too...
One definition of a shivaree is “a compliment extended to every married couple made up of beating tin pans, blowing horns, ringing cowbells, playing horse fiddles, caterwauling, and in fine, the use of every disagreeable sound to make the...
