A father-to-be in Susanville, California, wonders about how many different ways there are to say a woman is pregnant. He likes the term great with child, but isn’t crazy about knocked up. Fortunately, there are more than 120 terms, including:...
If you’re looking for yet another reason to buy an infant a present, there’s always Inside Out Day, which some people celebrate as the day when a baby has been out of the womb as long as they were in it. This is part of a complete episode...
Why do we speak to babies in high pitched voices? Often our eyes grow wide, we give big smiles, and we talk in exaggerated, singsongy voices because these are the things that infants respond to. Chances are this parental cooing has gone on since...
If you cut something to the quick, it means you’re getting at its very essence. It comes from the Old English word cwicu, meaning alive. It the source of the quick in the phrase the quick and the dead, as well as the words quicksilver (“living...
Do pregnant women enjoy pickles and ice cream? Linguists from the American Dialect Society have been discussing this recently. They found that the expression pickles and ice cream once referred simply to the conjoining of two unrelated things, sort...
pregorexia n.— «The topic of celeb baby weight has even spurred a new phrase called “Pregorexia”—a condition where women get so obsessed with keeping their weight down during pregnancy that they go to extremes with diet and exercise, ultimately...