Hockey mom? Staycation? Recessionista? What’s your choice for Word of the Year 2008? Also, what expression do you use to describe when it’s raining but the sun is still shining?
For true word nerds, it’s a guilty pleasure. You meet a stranger, and you find yourself listening closely to that person’s way of speaking as you try to guess the accent. Martha and Grant confess they play “Name That Accent”...
Dibby meant “fine” in slang collected from Brooklyn schoolgirls about a century ago for Dialect Notes, a journal that gathered regional word lists and glossaries. Much of that student slang vanished, including dibby, while some terms from the same...