What do you call the flavor explosion that comes from splashing some soft drinks from every one of a restaurant’s fountains into one cup? A suicide, a graveyard, swampwater? Any special recipes, or do you just wing it? This is part of a complete...
Anagrams, rebuses, cryptograms — Martha and Grant swap stories about the games that first made them realize that playing with words and letters can be fun. Also this week, what’s a jitney supper and where do you eat graveyard stew? The hosts explain...
C-r-r-r-r-reeeeeeeeaaaaaak! Last weekend, we reached into the AWWW vault and pulled out an oldie but goodie, featuring “death eatin’ a cracker walkin’ backwards,” “graveyard shift,” “saved by the bell,” and “dead ringer.” We also discussed “Bob...
Digital timepieces may be changing the way we talk, at least a little. There’s Bob o’clock (8:08), Big o’clock (8:19), and even Pi o’clock. Also this week, what do you call that gesture with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on a...
A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller says that when she was a child and recovering from an illness, her mother fed her a kind of milk toast she called graveyard stew. Is that strange name unique to her family? This is part of a complete episode...
A Wellesley College student has been reading about the Victorian fear of being buried alive—also known as taphophobia—and the bizarre 19th-century burial practices associated with it. She’s heard that they gave rise to such expressions as dead...