A listener shares her grandfather’s funny saying. It’s a series of logical statements, but when pronounced very quickly it can sound like some sort of Latin incantation: In mud eels are / In clay none are / In pine tar is / In oak none is. In The...
A Canadian-born caller says her mother, who is from Britain, addresses her grandson as booby. In The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, researchers Iona and Peter Opie write that booby is a children’s term for “a foolish crybaby,” which may be...