Lisa from Paris, Kentucky, grew up eating a German Christmas cookie at a friend’s house in Miami, Florida. This deep-fried, bow-tie-shaped pastry was made with butter, lemon, and rum, and dusted with powdered sugar. The family called them Hobelspäne...
In Dutch, if you want to say someone is “all talk and no action,” you can say that they’re selling gebakken lucht or “fried air.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dutch “Gebakken Lucht” or “Fried Air” Means “All Talk and No...
Kimberly in Harrisonburg, Virginia, grew up with a family breakfast called scorns, pieces of biscuit dough fried in a pan and served with butter. The origin is uncertain. No clear food-word evidence turns up for scorn as a dish, but the family word...
A wingnut is a handy, stabilizing piece of hardware. So why is it a pejorative term for those of a certain political persuasion? Also, is there something wrong with the phrase committed suicide? Some say that the word commit is a painful reminder...
For English speakers of a certain age, film at 11 is a slang phrase means “You’ll hear the details later.” It’s a reference to the days before 24-hour cable news, when newscasters would read headlines during the day promoting the 11 p.m. broadcast...
A 1904 dialect collection tipped us off to this variation on the idea of going to the land of milk and honey: “Going to find the honey spring and the flitter tree,” flitter being a variant of fritter, as in something fried and delicious. This is...
