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 dictionaries...
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...
The term white-livered, like lily-livered, can describe someone timid. But an old folk tradition, once common in the South, associates having a white liver or white spots on one’s liver with an insatiable sexual appetite. The terms white-livered...
Sometimes the process of naming a pet takes a while. The hosts talk about how their dogs’ names evolved. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Pet Name Evolution” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m Martha...
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 pond.”» —“Nordson Is Poised...
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...
