Crack of chicken is Elizabeth in Dallas’s phrase for an absurdly early hour, a playful mashup of crack of dawn and rooster-or-chicken expressions such as when the cock crows, up with the chickens, and go to bed with the chickens. The variant crack...
If something is mathematical, is it cool? According to a mother of two middle-schoolers, that’s exactly what it’s come to mean among the younger set. Then again, irony is also pretty hip. But could her kids be using a piece of ironic...
Has your boss ever used the expression “Let’s put the moose on the table”? This management buzzphrase, meaning “let’s address the problem everyone’s been avoiding,” is relatively new, showing up in print...
Why do we have piggy banks instead of any other kind of farm animal banks? In Scotland and Northern England, a kind of Middle Ages earthenware container called pygg. Today we fill our piggs, or piggy banks, with coins. This is part of a complete...
If you get hold of some bad sushi for lunch, you’ll wind up feeling poozley. A caller whose in-laws use poozley insists they must have made it up. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Poozley” Hi, you have A Way with...
Does your family have a word for the cardboard tube left over from a roll of toilet paper? A caller says his family refers to them Oh-ah, Oh-ahs. Turns out many families have their own terms for them, including drit-drit, dawda dawda, hoo-hoo, to...
