After Jonah moved from North Carolina to Grand Forks, North Dakota, his wife insisted the word he used wasn’t real when he described a plunger-style washing machine as souging clothes up and down. The verb souge, more commonly souse, is heard...
A woman in Cheyenne, Wyoming, says her mom used to refer to the cloudy scum that sometimes forms atop vinegar as mother. The term has been around at least 500 years, and can refer to the scum on the top or sediment on the bottom. It’s also...
A woman who relocated from the eastern United States to Evansville, Indiana, was confused when her mother-in-law there asked her to bring in some mangoes from the garden, since tropical fruits don’t grow in the Midwest. In that part of the...
Mike, a retired Air Force pilot in Mondovi, Wisconsin, asks why the bomb-release switch on an aircraft is called a pickle button and why pickle off means to drop bombs or fuel tanks. The likely trail starts in the U.S. Navy, where torpedoes were...
When is a mango not a mango? Why, when it’s a bell pepper, of course! An Indiana listener says she and her Kentucky in-laws have entirely different names for this vegetable. She wants to know why, so we help her sort it out.