Cynthia in Austin, Texas, grew up hearing her father say, No soldiering! when the kids weren’t pulling their weight in the kitchen. She was recently reminded of his admonition when she saw a bumper sticker that read no sojering. Both soldiering and...
Jan in Ketchikan, Alaska, says when she worked in a hospital in Maine, co-workers described a patient with a low pain threshold or otherwise reluctant to move about as spleeny. New Englanders in particular use the term spleeny to mean fussy...
“Sick abed on two chairs” is an idiom that can describe being sick but working anyway. It can also refer to the idea of being sick and going between two chairs: the dinner table chair, and the porcelain chair in the bathroom. This is part of a...
