A listener reports that when his Kentucky-born grandmother heard anyone say Who, me? she’d respond Your feet don’t fit a limb. It’s a pun on the sound an owl makes. This is part of a complete episode.
While vacationing on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, a listener encountered an Australian who used the term skylarking to mean “horsing around.” The verb to skylark goes back hundreds of years and once referred to racing through the...
In this week’s episode, “It was bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking thirteen.” Martha and Grant discuss their favorite first lines from novels. Also this week, palmer-housing, beanplating, meeting cute, bad...
The term like a tree full of owls describes someone’s appearance. What does it mean, exactly? And why owls? This is part of a complete episode.
scatter band n.— «I’m talking about the Marching Owl Band. The MOB. The Goodfellas of Groove. The MOB is what they call a scatter band, which means its members’ idea of a formation is running around like someone just dropped a hand...
snakebite v.— «Temple over Toledo—Hard luck Owls shake the snakebite.» —“Pitt Picked to Lose, Yale to Take Penn” by Ralph Bernstein in Philadelphia Gettysburg Times (Pa.) Nov. 9, 1962. (source: Double...