After our conversation about mini-seasons between the usual winter, spring, summer, and fall, listeners share other examples: stick season in Vermont and mud season in Michigan. The Old English word for “February,” solmonath, may derive from words...
Justin from Kalamazoo, Michigan, saw a Heinz 57 ketchup ad that mentioned euchred figs, sometimes spelled euchered. He’s familiar with the card game euchre, but why euchred figs? Although a handsome booklet produced by the H. J. Heinz company in...
Judy in Fort Worth, Texas, is writing some historical fiction. What are some tips for representing the dialect and vernacular of a particular time and place with accuracy? One great resource is the Dictionary of American Regional English. Another...
Following our conversation about the dismissive phrase, Not my circus, not my monkeys, Nelly, who is a professor of French and Russian in Marquette, Michigan, shares a handy Russian saying that translates as “the circus left, the clowns remain.” For...
Martita in San Antonio, Texas, is curious about the expression cool beans! meaning “that’s great!,” or “excellent.” This phrase was commonly used in the 1980s, and although the TV show Full House may have helped popularize it, the phrase is older...
Ruth calls from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to share warm memories of her family’s 3 p.m. coffee breaks. Her Swedish grandparents referred to those breaks as kaffedags, literally “coffee time of day.” (Similarly, matdags in Swedish is “meal time.”)...
