Mary in Dallas, Texas, grew up in Canada and wonders why her British mother affectionately calls Mary’s nine-year-old son booby, a pet name passed down in the family from England. In Britain, booby has long been a children’s term for a crybaby...
Uff-da! is an exclamation of disgust or annoyance. In Norwegian, it means roughly the same as Yiddish Oy vey!, and is now common in areas of the U.S. settled by Norwegians, particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota. This is part of a complete episode...
Drupe means a fleshy fruit built around a hard pit, such as a peach or cherry. A drupelet is one of the tiny seeded units that cluster into fruits like raspberries and blackberries. Those bead-like drupelets reminded professional namers of a...
Victoria from Dallas, Texas, asks whether kibitz means “to joke,” “to chat,” or “to offer advice from the sidelines.” All three senses appear in English influenced by Yiddish, where the word has ranged from casual talk to wisecracking to meddlesome...
Sneaky contract lingo, advice for writing well, and preserving a dying language. Say you’re scrolling through an online transaction where you’re asked to read the “Terms and Conditions.” Do you actually read them or just check the box and move on...
Faye in Marshfield, Vermont, grew up hearing sneezing to the truth after someone sneezed, a family expression with Yiddish roots. It comes from גענאָסן צום אמת (often spelled in Latin characters as a phrase rendered as genosn tsum emes and...