In the American South, you might indicate you’re going to walk instead of drive with the expression, “I’m going to take my foot in hand and walk.” A variation is “I’m going to take my foot in my hand.”...
Travis in Austin, Texas, has a dispute with friends: is the popular sorting game called paper, scissors, rock, as he believes? Or is it rock, paper, scissors? In the United States, the latter is the more common variant, although people have...
A listener in Shreveport, Louisiana, reports that after a fine meal, her father used to announce, “I have dined sufficiently, and I have been well surossified.” It’s a joking exaggeration of the word satisfied. In a 1980 article in...
The exhortation grab a root and growl is a way of telling someone to buck up and do what must be done. The sense of grabbing and growling here suggests the kind of tenacity you might see in a terrier sinking his teeth into something and refusing to...
Wrapping up 2016 with words from the past year and some newsy limericks. Bigly and Brexit were on lots of lips this year, as well as an increasingly popular Danish word that means “cozy.” Also, Quiz Guy John Chaneski sums up the year in...
Jonathan in San Diego, California, remembers his father answering How’s it going? with same old six and eight. The phrasing is very rare, but it may be a family or misremembered variant of the British same old seven and six, meaning things are...