Trivia time! Where in the United States can you visit Soda City? If you answered Columbia, South Carolina, you’re right! This nickname apparently derives from an old practice of abbreviating Columbia as Cola. The locals then referred to the town as...
Listeners like you make up more than half the funding of A Way with Words through donations. And the radio show/podcast still hasn’t raised enough funds to ensure new episodes in 2025. There are less than two days left in this year to do it! A Way...
Alex in Lexington, Kentucky, is curious about the term sidesaddle gift. It denotes a gift that the giver ends up using at least as much as the recipient does, such as a luggage rack that a frequent guest gives to their host family. The term...
A listener shares a tongue twister he learned at the age of five: Theophilus Thistle sifter, while sifting a sieve of unsifted thistles, thrust three thousand thistles through the thick of his thumb. Another version goes If Theophilus Thistle, the...
Victoria in Madison, Wisconsin, is curious about saying something is a thing, meaning that a particular phenomenon exists or is genuine. This phrase has been around since at least the time of Jane Austen, who used it in Pride and Prejudice. Other...
Marie-Claire from Montreal, Canada, wonders why we say that someone living in carefree luxury is living the life of Riley. No one’s sure this expression’s origin, although it may be associated with a 19th-century vaudeville song about an innkeeper...
