In response to our conversation about names we call grandparents, John Polk tweeted about a grandfather in his family named Uh-Huh and a grandmother named Who-Who. This is part of a complete episode.
Tim from Manhattan Beach, California, says his grandmother used to carry a brown paper bag and call it her poke sack. The word poke, in this case, means bag, making poke sack a pleonasm, which is an expression using more words than necessary to...
Pam in Eureka, California, says that when her mother and grandmother would enter a particularly dark room, they’d remark that it was dark as the inside of a goat. Mark Twain used the phrase dark as the inside of a cow in his book Roughing It...
Victoria from Tallahassee, Florida, weighs in on our discussion about terms for an extremely quick bath. When Victoria was young, her great-great grandmother from Poland, when checking if Victoria had indeed washed herself, would ask...
Brad from Allen, Texas, is curious about a term he’s heard only in Texas. It’s used to refer affectionately to a mother or grandmother: T Jones. Most uses of this term for a parent or grandmother seem to occur in the Dallas area...
Cecily from Indianapolis, Indiana, recalls her North Carolina-born grandmother would describe someone doing something stupid as being crazy as a betsy bug. The phrase alludes to the horned beetle, also known as the patent-leather beetle, a large...