Kara from Rockwood, Tennessee, asks about boogeyman after hearing in Port-au-Prince that the word came from a Haitian slave-revolt leader named Bokman. That story is unlikely, because related words are older than the revolt that led to Haiti’s...
Bruce in Indianapolis heard older Indiana farm folks use work-brickle for someone who’s industrious, or, in the negative, not much of a worker. The expression goes back to dialects of the British Isles and survives in U.S. pockets with shifting...