Patricia from Fort Worth, Texas, has been mystified by an expression her husband’s grandmother would use when trying to avoid answering a question about where something had gone. She’d say it’s gone where the woodbine twineth and...
Adair in Fort Worth, Texas, heard her mother describe a frightening drive in Louisiana by saying she and her husband nearly bought the ranch. That ranch version is a less common variant of buy the farm, meaning to die, especially in a crash or other...
Ann from Fort Worth, Texas, says her elderly aunt was talking disparagingly about two people who, in her words, wet around the same stump. This expression isn’t all that common, but it does appear in Sarah Bird’s 1999 novel Virgin of the...
William from Fort Worth, Texas, remembers dabbing monkey blood on cuts and scrapes and wonders why anyone would call a medicine that. The nickname refers most often to the bright red antiseptic Mercurochrome, and it has also been applied to iodine...
A Fort Worth, Texas, woman remembers her grandfather used to say, “You live and learn, then you die and forget it all.” She wonders if he made it up. Turns out, the phrase goes back to the 1840s and may allude to the brevity of life or...
How far back does cursing go? People have been using coarse language for thousands of years. Just check out the filthy graffiti on the walls of Pompeii. Although cursing has changed over time, the F-word and its ilk have been around for hundreds of...