A remarkable new documentary explores the world of amateur and professional mermaiding and the language bubbling up within it. Some mermaiding enthusiasts greet each other with a friendly “Shello!” Plus, an adoptee wonders what to call...
A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, listener has been pondering the saying It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and specifically whether she uses it correctly. The expression usually appears as It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good...
Morgan from Los Angeles, California, has always used dingy (pronounced with a hard G, like dinghy) to describe that woozy, muddle-headed feeling that comes with being sick, a sense she picked up from her mother. Standard dictionaries offer entries...
Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the...
Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...
Liam from San Francisco, California, asks about woo-woo, an adjective for beliefs or practices that strike someone as kooky, mystical, unscientific, or just a little out there. The modern use shows up by the 1980s and 1990s, and an early-1970s...