A listener in Bayfield, Wisconsin, says her grandmother used to tell her to “go sozzle in the bathtub.” John Russell Bartlett’s 1848 Dictionary of Americanisms defines the verb to sozzle this way: “to loll; to lounge; to go lazily or sluttishly...
Has ain’t gone out of fashion? Teachers have succeeded in stigmatizing the word, and it’s also not such a common pet peeve any more. But perhaps the biggest reason you don’t hear it as much is because it’s no longer used in fiction and movies...
Some people wouldn’t be caught without the season’s latest fashions, and others never leave home without their asthma inhaler. But for some of us, what strikes fear into our hearts is the thought of being caught without a book. Jeanie in Wisconsin...
A caller asks about how lakes get named, and we talk about a lake with a 45-letter Indian name that may or may not translate as, “You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle.” It’s Lake...