A Marine Corps veteran in Omaha, Nebraska, is puzzled by a phrase he often heard during his service in Vietnam: give me a huss, meaning “give me a hand” or “help me.” One strong theory for its origin involves a type of helicopter known as the Huss...
A San Diego, California, guy says his high school history teacher used the phrase chop chop wiki wiki meaning “Hurry up!” The first part of this phrase comes from similar-sounding Cantonese words — the source also of the chop in chopsticks — and the...
To cut a chogi, also spelled choagy or chogie, is an English slang term meaning “Let’s get out of here.” It probably stems from Korean: cheogi or jeogi means “there” (it’s opposite, yeogi, means “here”). and was picked up by U.S. soldiers during the...
“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first person to say them. As Berra...
File 13 is slang for a wastebasket, the place for paperwork nobody intends to process. Maria in Indianapolis hears it around her office, but the expression is older than recent office banter. It starts showing up in the early 1940s as World War II...
Ready for some crazy crossword clues? The hosts discuss some clever ones, like “hula hoop?” (3 letters). Also, is the correct term jury-rigged or jerry-rigged? Why are Marines called gyrenes? When someone points out the obvious, do you say “duh!” or...
