A New York City listener recalls that as a youth in Erie, Pennsylvania, he and his peers referred to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a choke-and-slide or choke-n-slide. It’s a reference to the qualities of the sticky peanut butter and...
Why do we call a peanut a goober? The word comes from the Bantu languages of East Africa. This is part of a complete episode.
Some of the best things in the book Letters of Note are letters from kids to adults. One young fan’s plea to Charles Schultz that he remove a character from Peanuts was actually met with approval. This is part of a complete episode.
Someone should write a love letter to a new book called Letters of Note. It’s a splendid collection of all kinds of correspondence through the ages: Elvis Presley fans writing to the president, children making suggestions to famous...
OMG, text messaging! It’s destroying the English language, corrupting young minds, turning us into illiterates. It’s probably shrinking the ozone layer, too. Or is it? In his new book, Txting: The Gr8 Db8, David Crystal offers a...
What do you call a word made from a blend of two other words, like motel from motor and hotel? A listener says his term for them is “Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup words,” after the old commercial: “You got chocolate in my peanut...