A Seattle, Washington, listener wants to know why, when marking time, we say “one Mississippi, two Mississippi,” as opposed to other states or rivers. In the United Kingdom, they’re more likely to say hippopotamus. Some people count instead with the...
The English language includes several words deriving from Arabic, such as coffee, sugar, and giraffe. Another is ghoul, which comes from an Arabic term for a “shapeshifting demon.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Words from...
Britain’s new polar research ship is named RSS Sir David Attenborough, even though an online vote overwhelmingly chose the name Boaty McBoatface. Versions of this playful construction go back at least as far as a 1987 episode of the television show...
Megan in Monticello, Florida, is bothered by on tomorrow, as in We can do that on tomorrow, because on sounds redundant to her. Rather than being a simple grammatical error, the phrasing is a well-documented dialect feature in parts of the US South...
Sitting on the floor Indian style with one’s legs crossed is a reference to Native Americans’ habit of sitting that way, a practice recorded as far back as the journals of French traders. Increasingly, though, the expression is being replaced with...
English rhyming slang had a short run of popularity in the western U.S., thanks in part to Australians who brought it over (and then, again, thanks to a scene in Ocean’s Eleven). But even in the U.K., it’s now mostly defunct. This is part of a...
