The emphatic exclamation “from hell to breakfast” goes back to the Civil War. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “From Hell to Breakfast” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi there, this is Brad Davis calling...
Who is Cooter Brown? And just how high is he? His name appears in lots of phrases, including “high as Cooter Brown,” “drunk as Cooter Brown,” “dead as Cooter Brown,” “fast as Cooter Brown,” and “fertile as Cooter Brown.” The earliest known...
In a 1936 episode of Jack Benny’s radio show, a woman says that her father sprained his ankle the night before while truckin’. This has an A Way with Words listener confused; she thought trucking was a term from the 1970s. Grant clears...
old settler n.— «Opening tonight in Warner Robins is “The Old Settler,” a love story set in Harlem in the 1940s. “Old Settler” is said to be a pejorative term for an aging unmarried woman.» —“Midstate’s...
shape v.— «Each weekday United Hispanic workers “shape”—search for work—by driving throughout Manhattan and the Bronx and visiting job sites.…As the shape van wound down to ground zero and back to the Bronx, a picture of...
dead wagon n.— «The “dead wagon” was put on the Harlem company’s trade. This wagon is run by the protective association nominally to collect milk cans, witnesses testified, but its real value lies in the canvassing of every...