A Delaware listener recounts a funny story about visiting a friend in Maryland who asked him to retten up the house while she went to the store. He had no idea what she meant, so he just lounged around while she was gone — only to find out later...
In their article “My Mother, Whenever She passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever,” Michael Montgomery and John Kirk discuss the “punctual” whenever, a vestige of Scots-Irish usage heard in much of the Southern United...
In Northern Ireland, a clever way to say that someone has an overinflated sense of his own importance is to say he’s “no goat’s toe.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “He’s No Goat’s Toe” You know when somebody thinks they’re the...
We spoke on a recent show about the joking consolation parents offer to a crying child, “It’ll be better before you’re married.” A podcast listener in Siberia emailed to say that in Russian, a similar saying translates to, “It has enough time to...
When someone says He didn’t lick that off the grass, it means he’s inherited a behavior from relatives or picked it up from those around them. This phrase is particularly common in Northern Ireland. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
milly n.— «In good old Northern Ireland (that’s Norn Iron in the local accent…beautiful, isn’t it?) we call “chavs’”spides,” and female versions are called “millies,” which makes it quite amusing when we hear of English girls called Milly...