A Yankee transplant to the South says that restaurant servers are confused when he tells them, “I’m all set.” Is he all set to continue his meal, or all set to leave? This is part of a complete episode.
Something that’s repaired in a makeshift, haphazard fashion, is said to be jury-rigged. Martha discusses the expression’s likely nautical origin and Grant tells how a different term, jerry-built, led to the variation jerry-rigged. This...
Some of the world’s greatest writers had to do their work while holding down a day job. William Faulkner and Anthony Trollope toiled as postal clerks. Zora Neal Hurston trained as an anthropologist. Vladimir Nabokov was a lepidopterist who...
“Not the brightest bulb in the Christmas tree lights,” “The wind is blowing but nothing’s moving,” “A few tacos short of a combo platter.” After Grant tells a story on himself, the hosts discuss euphemistic...
Martha tells the story behind the term Tom Swifty. Grant shares some more funny examples from the A Way with Words discussion forum. This is part of a complete episode.
A Woodbridge, Connecticut, caller tells the story of coming across the following definition for jungftak in Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (1943): “n. A Persian bird, the male of which had only one wing, on the right side...