Nick, an Englishman who divides his time between Ireland and Virginia, says his American friends were baffled when he described a convivial evening with them as good craic, pronounced just like English crack. The word craic is now associated with...
A listener in Huntsville, Alabama, says that in her native Scotland, the phrase send out for messages means to send someone to go shopping. The phrase stems from a time when the person going out to do the shopping or run other errands would also...
An Indianapolis, Indiana, woman offers a followup to our discussions about various geographic belts around the country. The Bungalow Belt in Chicago refers to a strip of small brick bungalows just inside the city limits originally occupied by...
In Ireland, if you say someone’s not as slow as he walks easy, you mean he’s a whole lot smarter than he appears. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Not as Slow as Someone Walks Easy” Here’s an Irish...
Tom in Indianapolis, Indiana, remembers hearing Irish pennant in the Marine Corps for a loose thread hanging from a uniform. The term belongs to the category of ethnophaulism, or ethnic slur, alongside expressions such as Irish screwdriver for...
Growing up in Jamaica, a woman used to hear her fashion-designer mother invoke this phrase to indicate that something was good enough, even if it was flawed: “A man on a galloping horse wouldn’t see it.” Variations include...