A Navy vet recalls learning the slang term gundeck, meaning “to sign off on checks or reports without fully completing them.” A possible origin involves a ship’s gun deck, either as a place where sailors hid to avoid duties or where navigational...
Tanya, calling from Xiamen, China, and originally from Marshall, Michigan, asks about dilly-dally, a phrase that surprised her coming from her 24-year-old brother. Dilly-dally is a reduplicated form of dally, from Anglo-French dalier, meaning “to...
How do you pronounce rooibos? The name of this tea comes from the Afrikaans words rooi bos, meaning “red bush.” Rooibos is pronounced ROY-boss, but it’s also called bush tea, red tea, or redbush tea. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
A Wisconsin listener wonders if anyone outside her family uses the word funsel, possibly spelled funcil, to denote “a single strand of leftover cobweb hanging from the ceiling.” That one may be all their own, but another word she asks about, gnurr...
If you’re described as a tall drink of water, or a a tall glass of water that’s a good thing. It suggests, especially for men, that you’re good-looking. A little more than a century ago, that phrase suggested a person was bland and boring, but it’s...
Nancy Friedman is a naming and branding expert with a fantastic newsletter about language, Fritinancy which recently covered the neologism stinge-watching. It’s the opposite of binge-watching, and refers to the act of spacing out viewings of a...