With your support, 2021 will be a pivotal year for A Way with Words. With your help, and by tightening our budget, through 2019 and 2020, we’ve managed to weather the pandemic while still increasing listenership both on the radio and by...
When Mary from Hanover, New Hampshire, was vacationing in Alaska, she picked up a term from the locals: sucker hole. It refers to a patch of sun peeking through the clouds, which leads tourists to assume that the weather is going to clear up. The...
John in Seguin, Texas, says his mother used to use a phrase that sounded like colder than a well-digger’s clavicle. Why would she use that term, if that’s what it was? Clavicle comes from a Latin word that means little key. This is part...
In Norway, a popular bit of advice translates as “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes.” It’s sometimes given as “Det finst ikkje dårleg vêr, berre dårlege klede” and the idiom is also used in...
Sugar weather refers to a period of time during the spring in Canada marked by warm days and cold nights, when the sap starts running in the trees. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sugar Weather” I tripped across a...
A listener shared a story in our Facebook group about hearing the term lazy wind, which refers to the kind of wind that’s so bitterly cold that it seems to go straight through you, rather than going around you. This is part of a complete...

