Why do some people pronounce the word sixth as “sikth”? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “”Sixth” Pronounced as “Sikth”” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Augusta calling from...
Bill in Surrey, New Hampshire, says his father used to tell him to hold tightly to something, such as a rope, by urging him to muckle on to it. He rarely heard the word again until a Scotsman visited his farm and admiringly noted that Bill’s...
The Dictionary of American Regional English traces you-uns, a plural form of you, to the Midlands and the Ohio River Valley. But the expression goes back a while. Even Chaucer used something similar. Compare you’uns, yinz, and other plural second...
Feeling fankled? It’s a Scots English word that means “messed up” or “confused.” In this week’s episode, Grant and Martha also discuss a whole litter of synonyms for dust bunny, a slew of different terms for the...
In Scots English, something fankled is tangled, messed up, or confused, as with a telephone cord that has worked itself into knots. Gordon in Anaheim, California, picked up fankle from his Scottish wife, and the word fits neatly with Scots fank, a...
A new resident of Pittsburgh is startled by some of the dialect there, like yinz instead of “you” for the second person plural, and nebby for “nosy.” What’s up with that? For a wonderful site about the dialect of that...