When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t...
Amanda in Reno, Nevada, has a dispute with her husband. Is it okay to ask if something is any comfortable? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Is It Okay to Ask if Someone Is “Any Comfortable”?” Hello, you have...
Unparalleled misalignments are pairs of phrases in which the words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other, but the phrases themselves mean different things. For example, the phrase blanket statement can be paired with cover story...
A Dallas, Texas, woman and her friends often use the expression All the things to mean something like and whatnot or as a way to signal a kind of mutual understanding, suggesting something similar to the phrase you know. This sense probably comes...
If someone is speaking in a way that’s confused or unintelligible, a Dutch saying applies: Er is geen chocola van te maken describes something incomprehensible, but literally translates as “You can’t make chocolate out of it...
Andre from Campbellsville, Kentucky, says his mother won’t watch a movie if it’s ary a bit violent. What does the word ary mean? Spelled airy, ara, arey, or ery, this dialectal term a shortening of ever a, and means “any” or...