Inspired by our conversation about the language of leave-taking and the Southern expression Y’all come go home with us, Claire in Durham, North Carolina, calls to reminisce about her experience as a teenager in Mexico and the extended good...
Particularly in the Southern United States, there are lots of fanciful terms for “a sudden, heavy rain” that involve the downpour’s after-effects. For starters, there’s gully-washer, frog-strangler, toad-strangler, toadfrog...
Modals are helping verbs that affect a verb’s grammatical mood and express possibility, capability, likelihood, permission, or obligation. The use in the Southern United States of multiple modals, such as might could and might should reflect...
The intensifier pure-d or puredee is a euphemism for pure damned or pure damn. It’s also sometimes rendered as pure-t, and used most often in the Southern United States and South Midlands. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
In their article “My Mother, Whenever She passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever,” Michael Montgomery and John Kirk discuss the “punctual” whenever, a vestige of Scots-Irish usage heard in much...
Deviled eggs, those hard-boiled eggs seasoned with a variety of ingredients, such as chopped pickles or pepper, are sometimes called dressed eggs, particularly in the Southern United States. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...