Ophelia in Johnson City, Tennessee, wonders about the exclamation her great-grandmother often used when something surprised her: Cat bristle! That may be her own version of a minced oath, although it fits with the idea of how a cat’s tail might look...
The expression tight as a tick is inspired by the idea of being full-to-bursting, like one of those insects when it’s engorged with blood. Tight as a tick can also describe someone who’s quite drunk or very miserly. Other phrases that connote...
Beth from Charlotte, North Carolina, says that if Beth’s hair looked messy, her grandmother would gently chide her with the phrase Your hair looks like a hoo-hoo bird in a haw-haw tree! The name hoo-hoo bird refers to an odd mythical animal, but the...
Nikki in Northampton, Massachusetts, wonders about a term her dad used for someone who’s a little odd or weird: do funny. As far back as the 1850s, Do funny or Doo funny was an amusing last name for characters in satire, whether in newspapers or...
An 11-year-old in Tallahassee, Florida, wonders about a phrase her late grandfather used. Instead of swearing, he’d exclaim “I swanee!” or “I’ll swanny!” This mild oath, and its shorter version, “I’ll swan,” derives from an English dialectal phrase...
A woman in Mammoth Lakes, California, says her father used to offer this advice: “In promulgating your esoteric cogitations or articulating your superficial sentimentalities, beware of preposterous ponderosities. In other words, don’t use big words...
