A Wisconsin listener’s family adopts their youngster’s made-up term for the treads on a boot. Years later, they all still refer to those things as bumpity-scrapples. This is part of a complete episode.
After our conversation about sisu, the distinctively Finnish term for “intestinal fortitude,” a listener of Finnish heritage from northern Wisconsin emails to illustrate the Finns’ understanding the word. Sisu, he says, requires...
Matt from Waukesha, Wisconsin, has been discussing the words barely and nearly with his 10-year-old son Simon. They know the two words are nearly alike, but how exactly? This is part of a complete episode.
Stephanie in Green Bay, Wisconsin, was puzzled when a colleague used the expression like grabbing a wolf by the ears to describe an impossible task. Like the idiom to have a tiger by the tail, it suggests the paralyzing difficulty of having hold of...
After Sarah moved from Wisconsin to Iowa, she sparked some momentary confusion when she asked a store clerk where his TYME machine was. In parts of Wisconsin, Florida, and Michigan there are automated teller machines, or ATMs, called TYME machines...
Growing up in Massachusetts, David always used the word bubbler to denote a drinking fountain. So he was flabbergasted during a trip to Southern Indiana when no one had any idea what he meant when he asked where he could find a bubbler. He might not...