Paul from Omaha, Nebraska, says as a result of watching the College World Series in that city, he and his son wondered when sports announcers started using the word cheese to describe a pitcher’s fastball, and such variants as throwing cheese...
Sloane, a 12-year-old from Omaha, Nebraska, is a bit anxious about starting middle school in the fall and wonders if there’s a single word that means “fear of middle school.” There are some long, rare words for the extreme fear of...
Years ago, Derek from Omaha, Nebraska, adopted the greeting howdy, but his wife says it sounds too uncultured. In a 2012 paper in the Journal of English Linguistics by Lauren Hall Lew and Nola Stephens describe howdy as a term that is enregistered...
Takk for sist is a Norwegian greeting that means “thanks for the last time,” which conveys the idea that the speaker is pleased to see the person again. Another Norwegian slang phrase translates literally as “to be in the middle of...
Rachel, who moved from Nebraska to attend school in College Park, Maryland, says her friends were surprised when she referred to the driver of an ice cream truck as the ding ding man. Indeed, this term seems to now be limited largely to Omaha...
Andrew in Omaha, Nebraska, says his Italian-American grandfather, who grew up in the city’s Little Italy, uses george for something exceptionally good, especially food, and double george for something really great. Slang George goes back to the...

