Kylie Ryan, an elementary-school teacher in Seattle, Washington, remembers that when she played hide-and-seek as a child, the call for everyone to come in was alle alle oxen free. Are there other versions? Yes, and because these sayings were not...
Susan from Seattle, Washington, has observed her toddler granddaughter starting to exclaim Uh-oh! when something goes amiss. Is that something she picked up from adults, or do adults pick it up from children? By 18 months, children have already...
Benjamin in Seattle, Washington, says both with a brief L sound, like bolth, a pronunciation his partner noticed before he did. It’s not confined to Northern California, where he grew up, or to the Midwest connection she wondered about. In an online...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a puzzle inspired rhyming terms with the eee-aww, eee-aww, eee-aww sounds of police sirens. For example, what sound does a donkey make? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Police Sound Word...
A customer-service representative from Seattle, Washington, is curious about the phrases people use as a part of leave-taking when they’re finishing a telephone conversation. Linguists who conduct discourse analysis on such conversations say...
You walk into a used bookstore, or pull down an old volume at the library, and there it is: The smell of old books. If you detect notes of vanilla in that intoxicating scent, there’s a reason. Also, why some people think the word awesome is...