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...
Molly in San Diego grew up hearing her mother say someone daydreaming was in a brown study. The phrase goes back in English to the 1500s and means deep in thought, often with a gloomy or melancholy cast. Here brown reflects an older sense of dark or...
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...
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...
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...
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...