Jase in Austin, Texas, knows that hickey means a “love bite” or “mark left on the skin,” and doo-hickey refers to a small object that the speaker can’t recall the name of, but why would anyone refer to a hickey in the...
Sam from Abilene, Texas, wonders about the phrase lean on your own dinner, which can be used literally to mean “support your own weight rather than leaning against me,” or metaphorically, as in suggesting someone refrain from asking...
Manuel in Fort Worth, Texas, wonders about a phrase he’s heard from his dad and uncles: Cut me a husk, meaning “Give me a break.” The term apparently evolved from slang used by U.S. Marines serving in Vietnam, and HUS, a designation for certain...
Diana in Duncanville, Texas, notes a difference between British English and American English. In the United States, it’s common to say I am sitting down or He was sitting there or We were sitting there, but increasingly she hears people from...
A listener shares a story about how she went from hating the nickname her grandmother bestowed on her to regarding it with fondness many years later. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Learning to Love a Nickname”...
After we puzzled over a caller’s use of the term Jack Roses to signal a sudden shift in conversational topics, Christye from Abilene, Texas, wrote to say that when that happens to her, she says, You didn’t put your blinker on! The word blinker is...