Donna in Ithaca, New York, wonders about the phrase I’ve had the radish, said by someone who’s exhausted or frustrated. It’s commonly heard in Vermont, and may be related to the French phrase je n’ais plus un radis, meaning...
Kathleen from Ithaca, New York, remembers her mother saying Go fry ice! meaning “Bug off!” It’s probably a minced oath replacing a phrase that exhorts the hearer to go do something else that starts with F. The earliest known...
A listener in Southampton, New York, puzzles over the language at the end of J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, in which the narrator assures that the story will continue so long as children are “gay and innocent and heartless.” What does...
Jared in Liberty, New York, wonders when and how the term fuggedaboudit originated and how came to be popularly associated with the New York metropolitan area. The films of Martin Scorsese had a lot to do with that. The word doesn’t always...
Christopher in Rome, New York, grew up with mappine for a dish towel, as in a mappine drawer or a stack of mappines on the counter. The source is Italian dialect: mappina means cloth, towel, or rag in dialects spoken in places such as Piedmont and...
Jen in Denton, Texas, grew up in upstate New York hearing her Brooklyn-born parents say scutch when someone was being a pest, as in “Don’t be a scutch.” The family spelling she gives is scutch, while a more often seen Italian-American spelling is...