Liz from San Antonio, Texas, has noticed going west in World War I-era poems, letters, and accounts, usually meaning to die or be killed in combat. The euphemism go west is older than the war and is especially associated with writing from Scotland...
Nick, an Englishman who divides his time between Ireland and Virginia, says his American friends were baffled when he described a convivial evening with them as good craic, pronounced just like English crack. The word craic is now associated with...
Our conversation about books that sit on your shelves unread and the difficulty of parting with them prompted Jen in Essex, New York, to write about her own attachment to long-outdated field guides because of the memories attached to them. This is...
A listener in Huntsville, Alabama, says that in her native Scotland, the phrase send out for messages means to send someone to go shopping. The phrase stems from a time when the person going out to do the shopping or run other errands would also...
Why do we describe something that’s genuine or authentic as the real McCoy? It has nothing to do with trains or an inventor! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The True Origins of “the Real McCoy””...
Callum at UC Irvine grew up with baffies, the family word for rounded, heeled morning slippers, and later found that friends didn’t recognize it. The singular is baffy, and in Scotland baff can mean a bedroom slipper. The word came through Callum’s...
