Dave from Indianapolis asks about toodles, the informal goodbye he learned from his aunt and now uses despite raised eyebrows. The word is a shortened form of toodle-oo or toodaloo, and it has been around for more than a century as a form of leave...
Diminutive suffixes, Donnie for Don, change the meaning of a name to something smaller, cuter, or sweeter. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Diminutive Suffixes” Hi there, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Scott...
Ben, who grew up near Pittsburgh and now lives in Olympia, Washington, grew up saying redd up for straightening a messy room, not so much deep cleaning it. The verb redd means to pick up, tidy up, or clear out, as in gathering books, putting away...
Scone can rhyme with either Joan or John, and dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, recognize both pronunciations. Chris from Seattle, whose Canadian wife favors the John rhyme, has run into the same split in text-to-speech...
Sometimes people say they are in studio, in hospital, or going to prom — but there’s no the in there! In plenty of dialects, it’s common to drop such articles, making anarthrous nouns, or nouns without articles. This is part of a...
Dog chewing waspers, a Virginia expression Rona heard from her father in the Blue Ridge area, pictures someone chewing gum with their mouth open and plenty of teeth showing. Waspers means wasps, with related pronunciations such as warshpers heard in...
