In Newfoundland the word bridge, also spelled brudge, can mean “a deck” or “a porch,” while the word porch refers to an additional room, usually attached at the back of a house, and used as a storage space or mud room. If a Newfoundlander says it’s...
We’ve mentioned the word orts before. It means “leftovers,” but if you want another great word for leftovers or various little odds and ends, there’s always manavalins. That’s how Herman Melville spelled it, although...
Nathan in Raleigh, North Carolina, heard his grandfather, busy making Thanksgiving dinner for the family, describe the work as going steady by jerks. The expression means by fits and starts, with bursts of steady effort broken by pauses or...
Nick from San Antonio, Texas, grew up hearing his father call an improvised lunch of leftovers and pantry odds and ends tiffin. In Indian English, tiffin can mean a light meal, especially lunch, and also the stacked metal lunch container used to...
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...
Some of us can’t go anywhere without a book or something to read. And one fast food joint hears you: Chipotle is now printing the work of famous writers on their paper cups. Speaking of fast food, saying that someone is two plums short of a...
