The phrase I’ll be a John Brown or I’ll be John Browned means “I’ll be damned” or “I’ll be hanged.” It’s a reference to the militant abolitionist John Brown, who in 1859 led 21 men on a raid of...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
A Virginia listener says that often when she’d leave the house, her grandfather would tell her Remember you belong to the land of the blue hen’s chicken. What in the world did that mean? The feisty blue hen is the state bird of Delaware...
“What has a head like a cat, feet like a cat, a tail like a cat, but isn’t a cat?” Answer: a kitten! A 1948 children’s joke book has lots of these to share with kids. Plus: an easy explanation for the difference between...
Jodie in Norfolk, Virginia, reports that a new restaurant there serving New Haven-style pizza is called District Apizza, pronounced “ah-BEETS.” The word apizza is a remnant of the language of Italian immigrants who settled in...
The autocomplete function on your phone comes in handy, of course. But is it changing the way we write and how linguists study language? Also, suppose you could invite any two authors, living or dead, to dinner. Who’s on your guest list and...