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Done and Dusted

After we heard from a listener about the phenomenon of swiping our hands together after finishing a chore—which she calls all-done clappy hands—several others reached out to say that in Great Britain, they use the phrase done and dusted. This is...

Episode 1383

Wet Brick

What the fox says may be a mystery, but we do know that dogs bark differently around the world. In China, for example, they say not bow-wow but wang wang.  Also, the story behind the British tradition of scrumping. It’s not a middle school...

Ballocks

“Ballocks!”, an exclamation of frustration or skepticism, is cognate with the word balls, and literally means “testicles.” Its use is considered far more racy in Great Britain than in the United States. This is part of a...

Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Can you guess what a smiley is? No, the other smiley. Or how about tarantula juice? You could, of course, happen upon someone with a muffin top drinking inferior whisky, or you could look these terms up in the new Green’s Dictionary of Slang...

Enamored Of

Should you use enamored of or enamored with? Grant explains that while North Americans use both, enamored of is the more common of the two. In Great Britain, it’s enamored of, a construction similar to those in several Romance languages...

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