A Nevada high-schooler wonders about the slang terms cap meaning “to lie” and no cap, meaning I’m not lying. Many people associate it with the Future & Young Thug song “No Cap.” However, the expression goes back to...
Amelia in Traverse City, Michigan, says her grandfather used to pull her close and whisper There are no bones in ice cream. He has a point there, but where did the phrase come from? That phrase seems to have arisen as part of a goofy joke making the...
How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
The joke I have a good carriwitchet, but it’s really obscure makes more sense if you know that a carriwitchet is an obscure term that means “a riddling question.” This is part of a complete episode.
Tricia in Chesapeake, Virginia, says if her father was annoyed with her mother, he used to jokingly tell her: Go sit on a tack! It’s another way of saying “Leave me alone!” Similar phrases include go fly a kite, go climb a tree, go...
In Hungarian, there’s a whole genre of silly jokes that have to do with an agresszív kismalac, or “aggressive piglet.” Each joke ends with an absurd punchline shouted obnoxiously. There are collections of these jokes online, as...