Eileen from Chesapeake, Virginia, recalls her mother’s response whenever someone in their family burped: Excuse the pigs, the hogs went out for a walk. It’s a mild reprimand (or apology, if the speaker is the one who burped), and there are many...
Daniel in Youngstown, Ohio, reports that his grandfather used an odd expression when the whole family left the house: We’re off like a herd of turtles — or a turd of hurtles! The first part of the expression is one of several similarly silly...
Kamela works as a nurse in Anchorage, Alaska. When she asked a patient how how he was doing post-surgery, the man responded with Well, I haven’t grown gills yet. It’s a jocular way of acknowledging that although he hadn’t recovered completely...
Deadpan, an adjective for a flat, unsmiling affect, as in deadpan humor, comes from pan as slang for “face.” By the early 1900s pan could mean the human face, so a deadpan was a face with nothing happening on it. Early uses of deadpan show up in...
After our conversation about first names that are also verbs, such as Grant, Bob, and Sue, a university freshman in Laramie, Wyoming, wrote to share a funny story about his dad’s name, Rob. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Rob:...
Rachel in Lexington, Kentucky, says her dad had a ready response whenever someone said they forgot what they were going to say: It must have been a lie. This rejoinder apparently goes back to a joke that’s been around since at least the 1920s. This...