Robert in Dover, Delaware, grew up hearing different ways to say aunt, from the version that sounds like ant to the same broader vowel as in haunt common in parts of the East Coast. In most of the United States, aunt rhymes with ant. The other...
The word ort sometimes means a small bite of food left on a plate, and it’s a handy word for crossword puzzle solvers. Many people first encounter ort at summer camp. Linda of New York City heard it when she chaperoned her daughter’s...
Susan from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who grew up hearing New York broadcasts, asks why the borough is called The Bronx with a definite article rather than simply Bronx. The name goes back to 17th-century settler Jonas Bronck, whose name survived...
When Julia emigrated to New York City from the Dominican Republic, she noticed that her Jewish friends on Long Island often playfully altered words, repeating a word and adding an SHM sound, such as changing deserve to deserve, schmeserve and cool...
Paul in Centerville, Massachusetts, says his parents, who hail from Brooklyn, New York, always referred to a fire hydrant as a Johnny pump. This term is largely confined to New York City, and may derive from the fact that these sources of water were...
Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, wonders when words like senior and senior citizen came to mean “elderly.” Senior comes from Latin senex, “old,” the source also of Senate and senile. In the 1930s, a politician helped popularize...