Lily in Iowa City, Iowa, says she and her roommate differ about how to pronounce the word hammock. Is it HAM-mock or HAM-mick? This is part of a complete episode.
Lily in Madison, Wisconsin, wonders about the use of the words vibe and vibing to mean “having a good time” with someone else. The sense of vibrations reflecting some kind of mystical connection goes centuries back and was famously...
What’s in YOUR spice rack? Say you’re cooking up a pot of chili, and you need to add more of that warm, earthy, powdered spice. Do you reach for a bottle of KOO-min? KYOO-min? Or are you going to add KUMM-in? The pronunciation given in...
Listener K.C. Gandee, a whitewater rafting guide from Bethel, Maine, tipped us off to lingo from his world. Dead-sticking is when the guide is doing all the paddling and no one else is. A lily dipper is someone who barely paddles while everyone else...
lily-pad n.— «At Nordson, Mr. Madar has been using what he terms a “lily pad to lily pad” growth strategy, jumping from one new market to another nearby one “rather than leap across the pond or into an entirely different...
pumpkin lily n. an effete or unskilled person; a novice. Also punkin lily. Editorial Note: Nearly all discovered uses this term, including the 1922 and 1958 citations below, come from descriptions of Teddy Roosevelt, then aged 25, at the time of his...