John in Tucson, Arizona, remembers his grandfather used the possessives hisn, hern, yourn, and ourn, as in Those cattle are hisn or That house is hern. These archaic forms originated hundreds of years ago, formed by analogy with mine and thine...
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and escargot...
Chuck in Rutland, Vermont, has heard a phrase several times over the years that left him puzzled. If someone announces it’s late and they’re going to bed, and someone else questions that idea, the retiring one observes, Well, it’s dark under the...
Hillary in Woodstock, Vermont, says she’s always pronounced mayonnaise as MY-oh-nayz. Is that pronunciation legit? The original French name of this cold, creamy sauce has never fully transitioned into English, so there are at least 15 different...
Liam in San Francisco, California, emailed to share a passage from Donna Tartt’s novel, The Secret History (Bookshop|Amazon). It’s a sensuous description of the sights, sounds, and smells of autumn in Vermont. This is part of a complete episode...
When Sean in New York City contemplated telling his boss he wasn’t coming into work the next day, he texted a friend that he might bang out sick. He wonders about the phrase, which he picked up from his father, a police dispatcher in New York City...