Clabberhead is a mild rebuke that suggests someone has a curdled dairy product for brains, clabber being sour milk, ultimately from an Irish Gaelic term for “mud.” The Dictionary of American Regional English has a good history of clabberhead. In...
If you take up texting and social media late in life, there’s a lot to learn! A twenty-something wants advice getting her dad up to speed on memes, Instagram, and animated images. Plus, when you’re on a long road trip, what do you call that one...
Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the way many English...
Jeff in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, asks about muldoon, a word particular to Baltimore politics, with a wide variety of meanings. Muldoon may well have Irish roots, as it is an Irish name. Baltimore columnist Frank Kent popularized it as a term for...
Don from San Mateo, Florida, recalls that when he asked his mother what he was getting for Christmas, she’d reply with: I got you a fastareus. It’s bigger than a breadbox and smaller than an elephant. His father also used fastareus as a placeholder...
Is Murphy’s Law, or the idea that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong,” a slur against the Irish? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Is “Murphy’s Law” A Slur Against the Irish?” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi there. This is...