Kathy from Wichita, Kansas, says her mother was a practical joker who’d laugh off her pranks by saying That’s just the kind of hairpin I am, which means “That’s just the way I am.” The phrase goes back at least to 1874. In his 1889 volume...
Linda from Wichita, Kansas, thinks we need a word for that closed-mouth little smile we give to strangers on the street — not a friendly Duchenne smile, just a polite acknowledgment of the other person’s existence. She suggests the word smurm. This...
you suffer from restless nights of tossing and turning, you may have a case of the mollycobwobbles. A listener shares this hand-me-down term from her grandmother. Grant explains she may well have combined two English terms dating about 150 years...