How do you spell the exclamation that rhymes with the word “woe”? Is it woah or whoa? The correct spelling in the United States is whoa, but when words are primarily transmitted orally, spelling often varies. This is part of a complete episode...
A caller says her relative always used an interjection that sounds like sigh for the equivalent of “Are you paying attention?” The hosts suspect it’s related to s’I, a contraction of says I. This expression open appears in Mark Twain’s work, among...
The word bummer originates from the German bummler, meaning “loafer,” as in a lazy person. In English, the word bum had a similar meaning, and by the late 1960s, phrases like bum deal or bum rap lent themselves to the elongated bummer, referring to...
The admonition “you don’t believe fatmeat is greasy” is found almost exclusively among African-Americans. (Sometimes written as “fat meat is greasy” or “fat meets greasy” or “fat meets the greasy.”) The idea is apparently that if you don’t believe...
Voilà (not spelled wallah or vwala or walla) is a good example of a borrowed word. Though French for “there it is,” Americans often use it as a simple utterance, akin to presto or ta-da. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Voilà vs...
A listener wonders why his girlfriend remarks “hubba-hubba” when he’s dressing up for the night. The flirty call had its heyday in the 1940s, when World War II soldiers would see a pretty lady walking down the street. Although no one’s sure of the...