“Hark your racket,” meaning, “shush,” is a variant of “hark your noise,” which pops up in Michigan, Wisconsin and Maine as far back as the 1940’s. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Hark Your Racket” Hello, you have A Way with Words...
Is there a word you keep having to look up in the dictionary, no matter how many times you’ve looked it up before? Maybe it’s time for a mnemonic device. And: a listener shares a letter from Kurt Vonnegut himself, with some reassuring advice about...
Bathroom walls, missing graffiti, and social media. Where have all the cute quips on bathroom stalls gone? We wonder about the apparent decline of restroom graffiti. Are people saving their witticisms for Twitter and Facebook? And: If there were a...
If you’re on tenterhooks, it means you’re in a state of anxious anticipation or suspense. But what IS a tenterhook? The answer goes back to a 15th-century manufacturing process. Also, you probably have a term for those crumbs that collect in the...
Where in tarnation did we get the phrase “where in tarnation?” Tarnation seems to be a variant of damnation. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Tarnation” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Julie Keller from Pittsburgh...
A 1904 dialect collection tipped us off to this variation on the idea of going to the land of milk and honey: “Going to find the honey spring and the flitter tree,” flitter being a variant of fritter, as in something fried and delicious. This is...
