The phrase potatoes and point involves a family tradition from times of scarcity when eaters would point to an imaginary food and ask for it to be passed when there was clearly no such food to be had. Irish sources trace potatoes and point to the...
In parts of Appalachia, the expression give someone down the road means “to reprimand” someone or “tell someone to get lost.” In Ireland, to give someone down the banks has a somewhat similar meaning, apparently referring to pushing that person into...
There are lots of colloquial phrases to explain away the cacophony of a thunderstorm: The potato wagons are rolling, The tater wagon’s going over the bridge, The potato wagon broke down, and God is dumping out potatoes and washing them off. In...
Rose in Lebanon, Virginia recalls a phrase passed down from her great-grandmother: The night before the first day of school, parents would come into the children’s bedroom and say in a singsong voice: School butter, school butter. This expression...
An upscuddle, also spelled upscuttle, is defined in both the Dictionary of American Regional English and the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Bookshop|Amazon) as a type of quarrel. A 1913 reference uses the term this way: “If they...
Katie in Everett, Washington, is curious about the expression If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers. What is a tinker? She heard this phrase on the television series The Gilded Age, in response to a character who is...