Katie in Tallahassee, Florida, saw a friend cooking with what she called a Scottish spurtle, a kitchen utensil that looks like a wooden dowel with a knob on the end, used to stir hot cereals and rice. Soon after, her husband saw an infomercial on...
A remarkable new documentary explores the world of amateur and professional mermaiding and the language bubbling up within it. Some mermaiding enthusiasts greet each other with a friendly “Shello!” Plus, an adoptee wonders what to call the...
Linda in Blountville, Tennessee, wonders why many old-timers in her area pronounce the word ask to sound like aks with the S and K switched, sounding like the word “axe.” The pronunciation “axe” for ask has nothing to do with intelligence. In Old...
Duane, who lives in New York City, says that his parents who are from the U.S. Virgin Islands use the term corotole to mean “clutter.” This term appears in The Virgin Islands Dictionary by Kareem Nelson-Hull (Bookshop|Amazon). It also appears in the...
Sundance from Dallas, Texas, asks whether his daughter’s near-miss clinky-dink and the family word coinkydink count as “real” language. Coinkydink, a joking reshaping of coincidence, belongs to a broader habit of deliberate mispronunciation and...
A listener in Enterprise, Alabama, recalls that when a storm was approaching, his grandfather would say, “It’s going to come up a Joe Moore.” The slang term Joe Moore comes from the word mojo, meaning a magic spell or magic power. By metathesis...