Judy from Indianapolis, Indiana, remembers her great-aunt Fanny using the expression take a jaybird, meaning take a sponge bath. She explained it as when you wash under your wings and your tail feathers, and maybe polish off your beak. Great-aunt...
A father of two small children says his Indiana family referred to a child’s runny nose as a “lamb’s legs,” as in “We need to wipe the lamb’s legs off.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Evan from Dallas, Texas, asks whether decimate should only mean destroying one-tenth of something or whether it can mean generally destroying it. The word goes back to a Roman military punishment in which one in ten mutinous soldiers was killed, but...
sposy n.— «I don’t even use a wipes warmer. Just squirt the solution on before use. For traveling I had been using sposy wipes, but just bought a tiny travel squirt bottle for the solution.» —“Cloth wipes/Make your own wipes...