Responding to our discussion about thin places, those spots where the boundary between this world and other realities seems narrow or permeable, a listener in Kirkland, Washington, sent us some eloquent thoughts about her own experiences of that...
In Japan, if you want to order a corndog, you ask for an Amerikan doggu (アメリカンドッグ). These types of coinages are called wasei-eigo, or “Japanese-made English,” and there are lots of them. Plus, there’s an atmospheric optical...
Ashley in Danville, Kentucky, says that if she’s looking pale or wan, her mother will say You look like a haint. The dialectal term haint is used throughout much of the American South to mean “ghost” or “evil spirit”...
What is the letter H doing in the English word ghost? The answer has to do with 15th-century Flemish typesetters working for the English printer William Caxton. They often added an H after an initial hard G to reflect the spelling of cognates in...
Marianne in Grants Pass, Oregon, first heard skookum after moving from Texas to Sitka, Alaska. The adjective, now chiefly heard in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, comes from Chinook Jargon, a contact language drawing on Chinook, Nootka, English...
In South Africa, the word spookasem is a term for cotton candy, although it literally translates as ghost’s breath. Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, the sweet stuff is also called candy floss or fairy floss. This is part of a complete...