A listener in Fort Rucker, Alabama, remembers a prank played on new Army recruits: when a sergeant barked the order “Zonk!,” all the seasoned soldiers would fall out of formation and run away, leaving the newbies to wonder what was going on. This is...
You may remember the call we had from Tony in Encinitas, California. He was curious about the term for an unusual hazing ritual.
A shivaree, also spelled charivari, is a raucous, good-natured hazing for newlyweds. A discussion here about that word prompted lots of listeners to write in with their own stories about shivarees. Martha shares some of them. This is part of a...
Pickle, baboon, cupcake, snorkel, pumpkin, Kalamazoo—let’s face it, some words are just plain funny. But what makes some words funnier than others? Martha and Grant consider this question with an assist from Neil Simon’s play (and movie) The...
One definition of a shivaree is “a compliment extended to every married couple made up of beating tin pans, blowing horns, ringing cowbells, playing horse fiddles, caterwauling, and in fine, the use of every disagreeable sound to make the night...
pig night n.— «One of its disgusted members told me of its annual practice called “pig night” when pledges were sent out to find “ugly townie girls” to be invited to a big Yale party—at midnight they were told, now illegally liquored up, that they...
