How hot is it? Well, poet Dylan Thomas found lots of memorable ways to describe a heat wave. In one letter to a friend, he wrote that it was so hot “My brains are hanging out like a dog’s tongue.” And: pestering country music stars...
In Scotland and parts of Northern England, dwadle means to “waste time,” “loiter,” or “linger.” This is part of a complete episode.
In Scotland and Northern England, something that’s kenspeckle is “conspicuous.” This word likely comes from Scandinavian languages and is related to English ken, meaning “range of knowledge.” And it’s not just ken...
The phrase don’t worry, it’ll be a pig’s foot in the morning is meant to comfort or reassure a child who’s stubbed her toe or scraped her knee or suffered some other minor injury. This expression is especially common in...
Fans of The Great British Bake Off (known in the U.S. as The Great British Baking Show because of a trademark issue) know that you don’t want your baked goods to be stodgy or claggy. The verb to stodge, meaning “to stuff,” goes...
In Appalachia, it’s fairly common to pronounce chimney as if it were spelled chimley or chimbley is fairly common in Appalachia. This pronunciation is an artifact of immigration in areas originally settled hundreds of years ago by people from...