Our conversation about losing a day to the International Date Line prompted Jaquelyn from Ishpeming, Michigan, to share that she and her friends refer to a seemingly interminable stretch of days as a Beatles week, as in the Fab Four’s song...
Amy from Ishpeming, Michigan, says her family’s idiolect includes the word grinslies, which they use to denote the sediment in the bottom of your coffee cup. The word orts is also a term for leftovers, and a dialectal term for the last little...
Bridget in Ishpeming, Michigan, wonders why so many English speakers answer a restroom knock with Ocupado!, even when they don’t speak Spanish. The usage may have been reinforced by bilingual signs in everyday U.S. life, including old airline seat...

