Kelly from Butte, Montana, recalls that when a few morsels remained at the end of a meal, her grandmother would say, Make it a nice day tomorrow, meaning everyone should eat all their food. A version used by a childhood friend’s family was Make it a...
Jill from Greenville, South Carolina, wants to know why pickle automatically means “pickled cucumber,” as opposed to other pickled vegetables, such as onions and carrots. The answer has to do with prototypicality, the cultural agreement that one...
Colin from Los Angeles, California, is pondering the expression make no bones about it, which suggests the speaker is talking or acting with no hesitation whatsoever. The saying is inspired by the idea of literally finding bones in one’s food, since...
A North Carolina listener is curious about his meemaw’s use of a term meaning “food” that he heard as either jasmine or jassum. A dialectal term with various spellings that include jassum, jasum, and jazm can mean “gravy,” “sauce,” or even “juice...
In parts of the United States, cottage cheese is called smearcase, from German Schmierkäse, a combination of schmieren, “smear,” and Käse, “cheese.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Smearcase, Schmierkäse” You have a way with words...
The word larruping and its many variant spellings is often used to describe delicious food. The verb larrup means to “beat” or “strike,” and larruping (often spelled with the G dropped: larrupin’) is used as an intensifier, like whopping or striking...
