Mary, from Royal Oaks, Michigan, says she once confused a friend by offering to relieve her of snow shoveling duties with the question, “Can I spell you?” This usage of spell, which refers to substituting for a period of time, has been...
Jeff in Dallas noticed that an early English pre-printed Christmas card read Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It points to a broader history of merry. In 1800s American English, merry was common for exuberant, joyful pleasure, and it is cognate...
“Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was black as ink, it chewed the paper off the walls and spit it in the sink.” There’s a variation you probably missed on the playground! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Do pregnant women enjoy pickles and ice cream? Linguists from the American Dialect Society have been discussing this recently. They found that the expression pickles and ice cream once referred simply to the conjoining of two unrelated things, sort...
Ever had golden catheads for breakfast? A native of Tennessee wonders about the origin of this term meaning “biscuit” — specifically, ones that are light, fluffy, and about the size of, well, a cat’s head. Martha explains how the...
This week: whether cotton-pickin’ is racist, unintentionally funny headlines, whether enormity can simply mean “enormous,” how a person can be “such a pill,” and pandiculation. “It’s good stuff, Maynard...