“Time to get kip” means “time to get some sleep.” Kip goes all the way back to an old Dutch word that means “brothel.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Kip Means Sleep” Hi...
Baseball fans know the eeuphus pitch-that arcing lob made famous by Rip Sewell in the 1946 All-Star Game. Before that, the word eephus referred to insider information. Jim Strain in La Mesa, California, even uses it as a verb, as in, “That...
Amanda in La Mesa, California, wonders why her roommate didn’t recognize scuttlebutt, meaning gossip. The word comes from nautical use, where a scuttlebutt was a cask of drinking water, a butt, with a hole cut in it, from scuttle, to cut a hole...
Why do we call that painful leg cramp a charley horse? While no good answers are out there, we did find some pretty far-fetched ones, including a story about old night watchmen known as Charlies and their broken-down horses. But the term first pops...
Why do we call our biceps guns? The slang lexicographer Jonathon Green suggests that the metaphor first pops up in baseball around the 1920s, when players referred to their throwing arms as guns. Believe it or not, the early baseball pitchers...
Grant has an update on the jocular pronunciation of skedooly for the word schedule, following up on our original conversation. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Updates for the Skedooly” Martha, do you remember the...