A listener was confused when she heard a radio announcer say a man had “Amanda Lynn” in his hands, only to find out that it was “a mandolin.” These funny misheard phrases are called mondegreens, a term coined in Sylvia...
Did you ever walk in a crocodile? In Britain, a crocodile can be “a group of children walking two by two in a long file.” The phrase came up in an interview with the stylist Vidal Sassoon, who, as a child in London walked in a crocodile...
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...
How can you tell the difference between who and whom? A listener shares a chant learned in grade school to remember the proper usage. This is part of a complete episode.
A North Carolina man says he was surprised as a child when he did a chore for his grandmother, and the Yankee dime she promised him turned out to be a peck on the cheek. This is part of a complete episode.
Grant argues that new commercial categories of literature, which include poop fiction, chick lit, K-mart realism, and tart noir resemble the kind of fracturing that already occurred in the music world. Here’s the blog entry that got him...