Megan in Arvada, Colorado, wonders about an exclamation she’s used all her life, which she suspects is spelled criminiddly. It’s another variant of that mild oath criminently, also rendered as criminetly, criminitlies, crimenightie, criminy, crime...
In their article “My Mother, Whenever She passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever,” Michael Montgomery and John Kirk discuss the “punctual” whenever, a vestige of Scots-Irish usage heard in much...
The slang term kittenball is used in parts of the American Midwest for the sport of softball. According to The Dickson Baseball Dictionary, a fire company Minneapolis, Minnesota, first applied the term kittenball to softball, and called its first...
Max from Sacramento, California, is curious about why the long, frosted doughnut with no filling that he grew up calling a long john goes by so many other names, including longie, bar doughnut, chocolate bar, maple bar, and maple stick. Food names...
Anna in the San Francisco Bay area asks about her family’s pronunciation of measure as /ˈmeɪʒər/, rhyming with hay sure, rather than /ˈmɛʒər/, rhyming with treasure. It’s uncommon, but not unique. Anecdotal reports put it in parts of the Great...
Heather from Sacramento, California, wonders about the phrase loaded for bear: Her husband thinks it describes someone who is thoroughly prepared and eager to do something, but her mother-in-law thinks it specifically describes someone belligerent...
