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...
Do pregnant women enjoy pickles and ice cream? Linguists from the American Dialect Society have been discussing this recently. They found that the expression pickles and ice cream once referred simply to the conjoining of two unrelated things, sort...
Howdy, all -- Lots of new episodes heading your way, starting this weekend! Meanwhile, our most recent broadcast features idiosyncratic Scrabble rules, 800-lb. gorillas, "tickety-boo," the slang term "legit," and...
Can you guess what a smiley is? No, the other smiley. Or how about tarantula juice? You could, of course, happen upon someone with a muffin top drinking inferior whisky, or you could look these terms up in the new Green’s Dictionary of Slang...
Well, shut my mouth and call me Shirley! Butter my buns and call me a biscuit! Kurt in Grand Rapids shares several of these humorous imperatives. The roots of this snowclone, a reusable phrase template of the form do X to me and call me Y, probably...
A riddle from A World’s Treasury of Riddles by Phil Cousineau asks, “A riddle, a riddle, I suppose, a thousand eyes and never a nose.” The trick depends on hearing eyes as something besides a face part. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...