A listener in Honolulu, Hawaii, wonders about an expression used by her husband’s grandmother, who was from eastern Kentucky: “He left so fast, that you could have played marbles on his coattails.” The notion that a person is...
A professional shoemaker in Columbiana, Ohio, wonders why the words cobbler and cobble have negative connotations, given that shoemaking is a highly skilled trade. The notion of cobbling something together in a haphazard or half-hearted way goes...
Sneaky contract lingo, advice for writing well, and preserving a dying language. Say you’re scrolling through an online transaction where you’re asked to read the “Terms and Conditions.” Do you actually read them or just check the...
“Not quite cricket” means not proper, substandard, or perhaps even illegal. The phrase is a reference to the world’s second most popular sport, cricket, and derives from the 19th-century notion that the “Spirit of the...
Collieshangles is an old Scottish term for a quarrel, possibly deriving from the notion of two collie dogs fighting. This is part of a complete episode.
Did you ever wonder why we capitalize the pronoun “I,” but not any other pronoun? Also, the romantic story behind the term halcyon days, the origin of the phrase “like white on rice,” and the linguistic scuttlebutt on the...