Beth in Spring Hill, Tennessee, grew up saying bedroom suite and was startled to hear bedroom suit in Georgia and Tennessee. Both forms can mean a matching group of bedroom furniture. Bedroom suit is especially associated with the American South...
Mary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, says that growing up, she and the kids in her neighborhood used the the verb pump to refer to giving someone a lift on a bicycle. This caused a bit of confusion when she went away to college and puzzled fellow students with...
A caller named Emily from Fishers, Indiana, wondered about nebby, a word she uses to mean picky and that her Michigan friends use to mean gossipy. In Western Pennsylvania, where the word is especially common, nebby means nosy or snooping, and it...
Is the term expat racist? Journalist Laura Secorun argues that the word expat implies a value judgment, suggesting that Westerners who move to another country are adventurous, while the term immigrant suggests someone who likely moved out of...
What do you call the piece of playground equipment with a long board and spots for a kid to sit on either end and make it go up and down? A see-saw? A teeter-totter? A flying jenny, or a joggling board? The term you’re most familiar with...
Touchous means tender, sore, or painful to the touch, as in a twisted hand that’s still “right touchous” a few days later. Ken in Richmond grew up hearing it from his eastern North Carolina family. The word is heard in the South and South Midlands...