The term palaver, meaning an idle or prolonged discussion, comes from the old Portuguese term palavra that British sailors picked up at West African ports in the 1700s, where palaver huts are places where villagers can gather to discuss local...
Charlotte in Alexandria, Virginia, has noticed a bit of National Park Service shorthand in Washington, D.C.: some attractions shrink to the first two letters of each word. Ford’s Theater becomes FOTH, Peterson House across the street is PEHO, and...
Adam in Indianapolis grew up with his grandmother’s warning not to split a pole, meaning that two companions shouldn’t pass on opposite sides of a lamppost, mailbox, or other street obstacle. The idea is that the physical separation hints at an...
Demonyms are the words for people from particular places, and Mike in New York has been turning them into a family road-trip game for decades. Some are predictable, such as New Yorker or Californian, but local forms and old associations quickly...
Why are some American place names pronounced differently than the famous place they were named after? Why is Cairo, Ill., pronounced “KAY-roh”? Why do Midwesterners pronounce Versailles as “Ver-SALES” and the New Madrid Fault...
There’s been a lot of talk about the place of handwriting in the digital age. Grant has some great books to recommend on the subject: Reading Early American Handwriting by Kip Sperry, and Handwriting in America: A Cultural History by Tamara...