If you want to claim something—say, the front seat of a car or the last piece of cake—what do you say? Dibs? Boney? How about “I hosey that!”? The hosts talk about this New England expression, its possible origins, and its equivalent in...
Time to solve another linguistic mystery. You’re in a restaurant. You overhear a conversation at the next table. The woman says to her friend, “You know, I just love the taste of joe floggers.” And her dining companion replies...
Where in the world would you be likely to find sculch in your dooryard, or ask for just a dite of cream in your coffee? Martha has the answers in this minicast about some distinctive regional terms.
mobile igloo n.— «I even found a google discussion group called, “FU people who don’t clean the snow from their cars.”…LOL! in New England, these are referred to as “mobile igloos.”» —“Learn to Duck: Mobile Igloos and...
A woman from Cape Cod is looking for a polite word that means the current wife of my ex-husband. She’s thinking about cur-wife, but somehow that doesn’t quite work. Neither does the phrase “that poor woman.” The hosts try to...
hammer-in n.— «At a hammer-in held last Saturday at the home of New Bedford’s George Rebello, a couple dozen knife makers from across New England and New Jersey forged, hammered and shaped steel into handsome knives.…Rebello founded...