Nick in Cincinnati, Ohio, is fond of his Appalachian-born grandmother’s phrase colder than blitney, meaning “extremely cold” or “cold as the dickens.” It’s likely a version of cold as blixen, which has a number of...
Jackie is originally from Cincinnati, Ohio, but discovered when she moved to Chesapeake, Virginia, that people in her new hometown were puzzled by her use of pony keg to mean “convenience store.” It’s a term that’s closely...
If you don’t have anything nice to say, say it like Shakespeare: Thou unhandsome smush-mouthed mush-rump! Thou obscene rug-headed hornbeast! The Shakespeare Insult Generator helps you craft creative zingers by mixing and matching the...
In 1894, the U.S. was in an economic depression, an Ohio businessman named Jacob Coxey led a march on Washington to protest national economic policies. This motley crew came to be known as Coxey’s army, and the phrases “enough food to...
Kevin Whitebaum of Oberlin, Ohio, has a favorite sentence from P.D. James’s A Taste for Death: “The original tenants had been replaced by the transients of the city, the peripatetic young, sharing three to a room; unmarried mothers...
Happy Valentine’s Day, our sweet baboos! Here are some expressions of love public radio listeners will appreciate. We’re also giving you another brand-new episode, in which we talked about the results of our great knitted hat survey...