Nate in Winterville, North Carolina, remembers an older relative asking Are you going to get outside of that? meaning “Are you going to finish that meal?” To get outside of a meal or to climb outside of a meal suggests that you’re getting the food...
After our discussion of joking ways to say grace before a meal, Al from Denton, Texas, shares the story of a curmudgeon’s highly efficient one: Much obliged. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “On a Nodding Basis with the Big Guy” Our...
What do you call it when you have no particular evening meal planned and everyone in the family just cobbles together their own dinner? Our listeners have been mulling this question and have lots of names for it: YOYO (as in “You’re on your own”)...
The catchphrase Good stuff, Maynard! Comes from a series of TV commercials for Malt-O-Meal hot cereal that aired during the early 1980s and featured a little boy and his imaginary friend Maynard. Some folks still use this phrase today when enthusing...
A bed lunch is a bedtime snack, the kind a parent might offer to settle a child’s stomach before sleep. It’s another case where lunch doesn’t have to mean the midday meal, as in shift work where a legally or company-designated lunch break may happen...
Matt from Noblesville, Indiana asks why contractors describe a complete, turnkey quote as soup to nuts. The expression means “the whole thing” or “from beginning to end,” and it comes from an old-fashioned meal that began with soup and ended with...
