Alan, who grew up in eastern North Carolina, remembers his mother saying jubous when she distrusted a claim or felt doubtful about a situation. The word appears in spellings such as jubous, jubus, dubous, and dubus, all reflecting dialect...
A restaurant review in the Myanmar Times describes a steak that “could not have been more middle-of-the-road if it was glued to a cat’s eye.” This analogy makes sense only if you know that “cat’s eye” is a term for the reflective studs in the middle...
If you can make neither moss nor sand of something, then if you can’t make sense of it. This phrase is particularly common in Northern England. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Neither Moss Nor Sand” We were talking earlier about...

