Elijah is from Fayetteville, West Virginia, and wonders why he talks differently from the way his peers from the same area of Appalachia talk. What causes someone to develop a particular accent? Two great resources for information about the...
The locals on Cape Cod refer to a newly arrived outsider as a wash-ashore. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Wash-Ashores” Not long ago, we had a conversation with Melinda, who had moved to the Chesapeake Bay area of Virginia, and...
What do you call the end of a loaf of bread? There are lots of terms for that last piece, including heel, bread butt, the outsider, the nose, bunce, tumpee, skalk, krunka, or in Spanish codo, meaning “elbow.” Sue in Singer’s Glen, Virginia, calls it...
In southeastern Virginia, a come-here is “an outsider” or “someone who recently moved to the area.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A “Come-Here” in Virginia” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Melinda Blanchard calling...
Contact, when used as a verb, is another word that once prompted peeving. In fact, in the 1930s, an official at Western Union lobbied for a company-wide ban on the word, which he deemed a hideous vulgarism compared to the phrases “get in touch with”...
Is Hoosier a derogatory term? People from Indiana proudly embrace it, but in the dialect island that is the St. Louis area, the word means someone who is uncouth or uncultured. In Southern Appalachia, the related words hoodger, and hoojer still...