Joe Messina from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wonders about the saying That’s it, Fort Pitt, meaning “That’s the end of it” or “We’re done.” The phrase goes back to a slogan for the Fort Pitt Brewing Company, which operated in Pittsburgh from 1906 to...
In Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell (Bookshop|Amazon), Gabe Henry recounts the story of the first national spelling bee in 1908, which some contestants had threatened to boycott because one of the contestants from...
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...
In response to our conversation about using the term bedroom suite to denote a collection of furniture, Judith in Glen Rose, Texas, shares a hilarious story about when her Pennsylvania-born beau misunderstood what she meant when she told him she...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has crafted a puzzle about cocktails with rhyming names. For example, in Jackson or Biloxi you might be served a libation inspired by the long-haired subculture of the 1960s. What drink would that be? This is part of a...
A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, woman says her family has long used the term nun puckeroo to designate a kind of vague, non-serious malaise. Neither Martha nor Grant knows that exact one, but the Dictionary of American Regional English gives similar...
