Victor, a film noir fan in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, says closed captioning has made him newly aware of dialogue he’d previously missed. Watching The Maltese Falcon, for example, he ran into the phrase crackin’ foxy. The crack is the same crack as...
A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, listener says when he was growing up, his family used the word schmutz as a verb. For example, when one parent reminded the other to apply sunscreen to the youngsters, they might say Make sure you schmutz the kids...
Listeners continue to chime in on the topic of funny street names. One of them points out that in Philadelphia, there’s a Rhoads Street and a Street Road. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “At the Intersection of Lost and Confused”...
Polly from Issaquah, Washington, grew up in Washington, D.C., where she and her family used the term food store to mean “grocery store.” However, a friend from the Midwest teases her about this. Does anyone else call a grocery store a food store...
When Audrey was growing up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the late 1990s, it seemed that everyone around her used the word jawn as an all-purpose substitute for other words, as in I took my jawn to the jawn and we had a bunch of jawns...
Mark from Los Angeles, California, is curious about the slang term gank, meaning to steal. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Gank, To Steal” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, Martha. This is Mark. I’m calling from Los Angeles...
