Beth from Charlotte, North Carolina, says that if Beth’s hair looked messy, her grandmother would gently chide her with the phrase Your hair looks like a hoo-hoo bird in a haw-haw tree! The name hoo-hoo bird refers to an odd mythical animal, but the...
Seven-year-old Everett from Tallahassee, Florida, wants to know why we refer to a scrape or other minor injury as a boo-boo. Such reduplication of words and syllables is common in baby talk used to soothe a child. Also, boo-boo sounds a little like...
In response to our conversation about names we call grandparents, John Polk tweeted about a grandfather in his family named Uh-Huh and a grandmother named Who-Who. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Odd Grandparent Names” Following...
Does your family have a word for the cardboard tube left over from a roll of toilet paper? A caller says his family refers to them Oh-ah, Oh-ahs. Turns out many families have their own terms for them, including drit-drit, dawda dawda, hoo-hoo, to...
By the way, if you want to read about more family words, check out Paul Dickson’s book, Family Words: A Dictionary of the Secret Language of Families. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dictionary of Family Words” Grant, here’s an...
