A magnificent new book celebrates the richness and diversity of 450 years of written and spoken English in what is now the United States. It’s called The People’s Tongue, and it’s a sumptuous collection of essays, letters, poems...
Mackenzie from Green Bay, Wisconsin, learned the word agita from a friend in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She uses it to refer to “that heavy, sluggish feeling one gets after eating too much,” the feeling some call the meat sweats. The word agita comes...
Brittany in Green Coast Springs, Florida, says that when she was grumpy or irritated as a child, her mother would say a phrase that sounded like Don’t be such a scooch. This bit of Italian-American slang, often rendered as skutch, denotes a “pest”...
Candace from Memphis, Tennessee, wonders about the phrase You’re eating me out of house and home. The emphatic doublet house and home is part of a long tradition that includes scared out of house and home and chased out of house and home. Even...
In English, a clumsy persona may be said to have butterfingers, but Italians refer to such a person with a phrase that translates as “having pastry-dough hands.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Pastry-Dough Hands” 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...