A stereotype is a preconceived notion about a person or group. Originally, though, the word stereotype referred to a printing device used to produce lots of identical copies. • The link between tiny mythical creatures called trolls and modern-day...
Megan from Seal Beach, California, adores her red-headed daughter, but now that Megan’s remarried, she and her family are mulling the phrase I’m going to beat you like a red-headed stepchild. Other versions include a red-haired stepchild...
When Liz from Laramie, Wyoming, was hiking the Appalachian Trail, some fellow hikers and locals assumed from her accent that she grew up outside the United States. The assumptions made by people she met probably had more to do with the context...
Years ago, Derek from Omaha, Nebraska, adopted the greeting howdy, but his wife says it sounds too uncultured. In a 2012 paper in the Journal of English Linguistics by Lauren Hall Lew and Nola Stephens describe howdy as a term that is enregistered...
Sarah from Dallas called us years ago to talk about the word preheat. Now newly married, she and her Russian husband have a friendly dispute over this question: “What is a sandwich?” We gingerly wade into the longstanding cultural debate...
Stereotyped notice in Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass points back to printing, not to a social generalization. Sidney from Indianapolis, Indiana, noticed the phrase in Douglass’s line about a meeting called under the...