Andres from San Diego, California, wonders: Why do we refer to jail as the pokey? The term, along with its variant pogie or pogey, likely goes back to a word for workhouse, a prison where people worked as part of their sentence, much like...
Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words! This past weekend we aired the episode in which we talked about "grouch bag," the pronunciation of "patronize," the origin of "dead heat," and the use of the German...