Amy from Abilene, Texas, is moving to the Northeast, and a realtor in her new hometown told her that once the paperwork went through, bada boom, bada bing, she’d have a new home. Amy and her husband had only heard it in movies and on TV...
If you need a variation on the phrase “son of gun,” there’s always “son of a who cut your hair last.” It’s one of several colorful expressions that a San Diego listener’s great aunt used. Others include...
Yolani from San Diego grew up saying squoze as the past tense of squeeze, as in “I squoze some oranges,” and wants to know whether it’s a real word. The standard form for formal writing and speech is squeezed, but squoze has centuries of dialectal...
He thinks he’s a wit, and he’s half right. Though some might attribute the quote to Shakespeare, it’s nowhere to be found in the concordances. Grant explains how many of these witticisms have been tumbled about by old newspaper...
Why do we speak of trying to egg on a person, meaning to urge them to do something? Martha explains that the egg in this case has nothing to do with chickens. This kind of “egg” is derives from an old root that means to “urge on...
An Indianapolis listener who lives on same street where James Whitcomb Riley made his home wonders if the poet’s name has anything to do with the expression associated with living in high style, “the life of Riley.” Click on the...