The word versus can be abbreviated any of several ways. In legal contexts in the United States, it’s usually abbreviated as v., as in Supreme Court decisions on Brown v. Board of Education or Roe v. Wade. In less formal situations, such as sports...
A listener in Virginia Beach, Virginia, reports that her three-year-old would ask for horrible eggs rather than hard boiled eggs, and the family has used that term ever since. A listener in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, says her Cuban-born mother...
Jeff in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is married to a woman from Barcelona who grew up speaking British English. She pointed out to him his use of the word of with the preposition off, as in Take the book off of the table or Let’s get off of the highway...
Modals are helping verbs that affect a verb’s grammatical mood and express possibility, capability, likelihood, permission, or obligation. The use in the Southern United States of multiple modals, such as might could and might should reflect the...
Susan in Virginia Beach, Virginia, says that whenever she looked sad as a child, her grandmother would say she looked like somebody licked the red off her candy. This phrase goes back at least to the 1920s, and refers to licking the red coloring off...
Gabriel Ray from Virginia Beach, Virginia, wonders about the history of something his grandfather used to say in a shoulder-shrugging way: Everything’s duck but the bill. The origin of this phrase is unclear, but it’s similar to a couple of old...