It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Damien from New York City, NY, is curious about the term his Hungarian grandmother used for the crust that forms at the corners of your eyes after a night’s sleep. The Hungarian word for eye boogers is csipa, pronounced “CHEE-pah.”...
Joan in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, asks about hayna, a spoken regional term she grew up with in northeastern Pennsylvania. It’s used as a friendly tag question meaning something like isn’t it? or right? Hayna is an orally transmitted tag question...