Andrea, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, hears all the things from friends and co-workers as a shorthand for and whatnot or you know, a way to say that the listener can fill in the rest. The phrase likely owes something to Allie Brosh’s 2010 post on...
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...
Eduarda phones from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to ask about the English expression burn the midnight oil, meaning “to work late.” The phrase goes back to the days of having to use oil lamps for illumination at night. A Spanish idiom...
The Portuguese idiom virar a noite refers to doing something all night, such as studying or dancing. Literally, virar a noite means “to turn over the night.” In French a sleepless night is a nuit blanche, or “white night.”...
How hot is it? Well, poet Dylan Thomas found lots of memorable ways to describe a heat wave. In one letter to a friend, he wrote that it was so hot “My brains are hanging out like a dog’s tongue.” And: pestering country music stars...
In Black English, the word trifling describes a person who lacks ambition or fails to keep promises. Former President Barack Obama used it that way in his memoir Dreams from My Father (Bookshop|Amazon). This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
