Kathy from Evansville, Indiana, is bothered when she hears younger people use to verse as a verb, as in “Who are they versing?” and “We versed that team last week.” This term arose out of misunderstanding versus, a...
Fret can work transitively in parts of the American South, as in Don’t fret that child, meaning don’t bother or worry them. Angela, originally from North Carolina, asked about the usage at a Dallas event after hearing forms such as Don’t fret him...
Sophia, a 13-year-old from Naperville, Illinois, says she, her sister, and friends use search it up to mean look it up online, despite her mother’s objection that it should be look it up or just search it. The phrasing is real and especially common...
Scarecrow and pickpocket are compound words that name things and people by describing what they do. Such nouns were especially popular centuries ago, when quake-breech meant a coward, a saddle-goose was a fool, a scrape-gut was a violinist, and...
The punk band Sacred Cash Cow in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, is planning a tribute to another local band that’s breaking up, so they called to ask how to pronounce homage. If you’re paying homage, the older English borrowing usually stresses the...
To frogmarch someone means to hustle them out of a place, usually by grabbing their collar and pinning their arms behind. Originally, this verb referred to police carrying an unruly person out of a building face down with a different person grasping...