The language and melodies of military marching songs connect grown children with their parents who served, as do parents’ love letters from World War II. Plus, “running a sandy” describes an awkward love triangle and Northern Spy is a kind of apple...
Whitewater rafting has a rich tradition of jargon and slang that includes such terms as boulder garden, strainer, and drop pool. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Whitewater Rafting Words” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the...
In kayakers’ slang, a park and play is a part of a river where you park your vehicle closer to a river and enter the water to paddle around a particular water feature, then paddle back to your launch spot rather than continue downstream. If you make...
In whitewater rafting, river left and river right identify the banks on either side of a river from the viewpoint of someone facing downstream. Like stage left and stage right, the labels depend on a shared orientation rather than on where any one...
What’s in YOUR spice rack? Say you’re cooking up a pot of chili, and you need to add more of that warm, earthy, powdered spice. Do you reach for a bottle of KOO-min? KYOO-min? Or are you going to add KUMM-in? The pronunciation given in dictionaries...
Listener K.C. Gandee, a whitewater rafting guide from Bethel, Maine, tipped us off to lingo from his world. Dead-sticking is when the guide is doing all the paddling and no one else is. A lily dipper is someone who barely paddles while everyone else...