Clark in Fort Worth, Texas, asks about the expression “not to mince words” after seeing it in a New York Times Paul Krugman column. To mince is “to make small,” from the same word family as diminish, miniature, and minute. Mincing onions cuts them...
At SUNY Potsdam and North Country Public Radio, Grant Barrett collected slang, regionalisms, and family expressions on index cards, about 160 terms in all. Examples include crick, a northern regional pronunciation of creek, and bogue or boag, slang...
Get out your umbrellas — it’s raining pitchforks and … bullfrogs? This week, it’s odd expressions that mean “a heavy downpour.” Also, holistic vs. wholistic, recurrence vs. reoccurrence, flash drive vs. thumb drive...
Did you miss our recent brand-new episode in which we talked about the game rock-paper-scissors, Band-Aids vs. plasters, Yiddish proverbs, jonesing, and more? Listen to it on our website or download the MP3. We aired a rebroadcast last weekend...
Happy Valentine’s Day, our sweet baboos! Here are some expressions of love public radio listeners will appreciate. We’re also giving you another brand-new episode, in which we talked about the results of our great knitted hat survey...
Why do spelling bees use such strange words — often foreign words that almost nobody uses? Like cymotrichous, stromuhr, Laodicean, guerdon, serrefine, and Ursprache? We answered that question in last week’s episode — it’s what happens...
