In New York and northern New Jersey, a children’s playground slide was once commonly known as sliding pond or sliding pon. The terms reflect the considerable influence of Dutch settlement in that area, the Dutch word baan meaning a “path” and...
New research shows that you may be less influenced by superstitious behavior like walking under ladders or the magic of four-leaf clovers if you’re reading about it in another language. • Sometimes not cursing will catch someone’s ear...
The piece of playground equipment you slide down goes by several different names, depending on which part of the U.S. you’re from: slide, sliding board, sliding plank, and sliding pond. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
As a kid, you may have played that game where you phone someone to say, “Is your refrigerator running? Then you better go catch it!” What’s the term for that kind of practical joke? Is it a crank call or a prank call? There’s...
A New York City listener recalls that as a youth in Erie, Pennsylvania, he and his peers referred to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich as a choke-and-slide or choke-n-slide. It’s a reference to the qualities of the sticky peanut butter and the...
When hiking off-trail, it’s important to keep an eye on where you’ve been as well as where you’re going. Otherwise, you run the risk of what experienced hikers call being “ledged out”, which means you’ve descended...