A North Carolina listener is curious about his meemaw’s use of a term meaning “food” that he heard as either jasmine or jassum. A dialectal term with various spellings that include jassum, jasum, and jazm can mean “gravy,” “sauce,” or even “juice...
Kelly from Cincinnati, Ohio, says her father uses the word gradoo to mean “clutter” or “a bit of litter.” Also spelled gradu or gradeau, our listeners report using this word in a variety of ways, to mean “gunk,”...
Melissa in Grand Prairie, Texas, hails from a family in New Jersey that refers to red pasta sauce with meat in it as gravy. Her family has Italian roots, and in their local dialect, the word for “sauce” can also be translated as...
In Icelandic, the phrase analogous to our cherry on top of the sundae, meaning “a little something extra,” translates literally as “the raisin at the end of the sausage.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
If something’s all chicken but the gravy, then it’s all good. This colloquialism pops up in an exchange from a 1969 Congressional record. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “All Chicken But the Gravy” Hello...
Why are skillets also called spiders? Some of the three-legged, long-handled pans used for frying actually resemble spiders. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Spider Skillet” Here’s a slang word from 1888 that...