A listener who grew up in Newfoundland remembers her grandfather declaring the fog was thick as burgoo. Turns out burgoo was sailors’ slang for a gray, gelatinous oatmeal—exactly the right image for an impenetrable Newfoundland fog. The word appears...
Chelsea from Louisville, Kentucky, is having a debate with her husband about how to pronounce antenna. She’s from Chicago, Illinois, and he’s from Louisville. She pronounces the second syllable to sound like the word ten, while he pronounces that...
A Kentuckian named Sheila moved out of state for several years, but now that she’s returned to work at Western Kentucky University, she finds that many students no longer seem to have a stereotypically “Southern” accent. What’s going on? There is...
What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push around the grocery store? Shopping cart? Shopping carriage? Shopping wagon? Buggy? A former Kentuckian wonders if anyone besides her calls them bascarts. Check out this dialect map featuring...
“Don’t tump over the canoe!” The verb to tump is familiar to folks in many parts of the United States. Use it elsewhere, though, and you might get some quizzical looks. What does it mean and who uses it? The hosts tump over their reference works and...
We asked you to tell us about odd regional food names, and boy did you oblige! Martha reads some of your letters about whoopie pies, hot tamales, pretzel salad, coolers, and the frappe vs. milkshake controversy.
