Carriage, cart, wagon, buggy — how do you refer to that giant basket on wheels you push around the grocery store? As the Harvard Dialect Survey shows, the answer depends on what part of the United States you’re from. See the big Facebook...
The enviable poker position known as the catbird seat belongs to the last player to bet, who can see everyone else act first. Mike, a poker player in Alabama, wants to know how the phrase got there. Baseball broadcaster Red Barber said he first...
Why are skillets also called spiders? Some of the three-legged, long-handled pans used for frying actually resemble spiders. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Spider Skillet” Here’s a slang word from 1888 that...
Pallet, in Southern and South Midland speech, can mean a makeshift bed on the floor, like the one Angela remembered making as a child in Texas. The blues and folk standard “Make Me a Pallet on Your Floor,” recorded by artists including Mississippi...
In a previous episode, we came upon a word mystery in a 1947 menu from Jackson, Mississippi, that mentions tang. The mystery has been solved! It wasn’t the drink, and it wasn’t the fish; it was Cudahy Tang, one of over a hundred knockoff...
In the U.K., they don’t count seconds as “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi,” because, well, they have no Mississippi. Instead, they say “one-elephant, two-elephant.” Lynne Murphy, author of the blog Separated by a...