Gabe from Newark and Michigan asks about the fighting challenge “Put up your dukes,” a phrase that treats dukes as fists or hands. A familiar explanation connects it with Cockney rhyming slang: Dukes of York rhymes with fork, once slang for “hand.”...
A listener in Springfield, Illinois, recalls that an elderly relative would respond to the question “How are you?” with the answer “Forked end down.” By that, he meant, “I’m fine.” If you’ve ever drawn...
If you say, “He stuck his spoon in the wall,” you mean that he died. In German, the person who’s deceased has passed along his spoon, and in Afrikaans, he’s jabbed his spoon into the ceiling. These expressions reflect the...
bake blind v. phr.— «When recipes tell you to bake blind, they don’t mean cover your eyes. Baking blind is the term for cooking a pie shell—partially or completely—without any filling. You shouldn’t just pop the shell in the oven. It’ll...
ROW n.— «The sheriff’s office in Aspen calls it “R.O.W.”—shorthand for “the rest of the world”—when deputies get tied up on time-consuming, costly special assignments when some prestigious figure from beyond the Roaring Fork Valley comes...
noodle v.— «Sheriff Thomas Johnstone said Hargraves was noodling (attempting to catch fish bare-handed) when he apparently stepped into a deep hole in Salt Fork River.» —“Warnings Issued After 3 State Fishermen...
