Homer in Kingsport, Tennessee, says that when Homer came in after curfew, his dad would say, “You guys have been out swarping, haven’t you?” Swarping is related to a variety of dialect terms in Scotland and Northern England that have to do with...
Jennifer, a seventh-grade English teacher in Kingsport, Tennessee, and her students have been studying the development of Romance languages, which got them wondering: When did the words romance and romantic come to be associated with stories about...
Marcus in Kingsport, Tennessee, says that as children, if he and his sister left snacks or crumbs around the kitchen, his mother would say in exasperation that all the kids ever wanted to do was to mess and gaum. The word gaum means “a greasy or...
A man who moved to Kingsport, Tennessee, was puzzled when he offered one of his new neighbors a refill on her beverage. She said “I wouldn’t care to have any,” which he understood to be a refusal. What she meant was that she did want another glass...