Michael from Sherman Oaks, California, says that as a teacher in New Jersey in the 1980s, he heard students saying My word is born, meaning “You better believe me,” and later shortened to simply word. The research of linguist Geneva...
Corey in Fort Worth noticed bougie in music and books and wondered how it moved from the Marx-era sense of bourgeois toward a slang insult. Bougie, also spelled boojee, is short for bourgeois and usually criticizes someone as showy, putting on airs...
We often hear that English is going to hell in a handbasket. Actually, though, linguistic handwringing about sinking standards and sloppy speech has been going on for centuries – at least as far back as the 1300’s! And: language also...
Learning that fat meat is greasy, which means learning something the hard way, is a common idiom used almost exclusively in the African-American community, and refers to a juicy cut of the pig called fatmeat. Linguist Geneva Smitherman has a great...
White on rice isn’t a racist idiom. It likens closeness, stickiness, or being “all over” a task to white rice, long the default rice on many U.S. tables and often sticky. The expression shows up often in African American English, and Geneva...
Sell wolf tickets, also found as sell woof tickets, means to make loud, boastful threats without much behind them. In African American English, the companion phrase buy wolf tickets means to take those threats seriously. Geneva Smitherman, a...