Jesse from Louisville, Kentucky, wonders if the second-person plural pronoun y’all is becoming more popular throughout the United States. A 2000 article in the Journal of English Linguistics finds that y’all and you-all are indeed spreading beyond...
Remember a few years ago when Amazon introduced that mysterious device called a Kindle? People worried that electronic readers would replace traditional books. Turns out the death of the hardcover was greatly exaggerated. Also, the expression...
Chris from Harrisonburg, Virginia, grew up in Pittsburgh saying jaggin around or jagging around for goofing off, teasing, or playing tricks. This classic Pittsburghese term is tied to the old verb jag, “to prick, stab, or jab,” so the teasing sense...
The Dictionary of American Regional English traces you-uns, a plural form of you, to the Midlands and the Ohio River Valley. But the expression goes back a while. Even Chaucer used something similar. Compare you’uns, yinz, and other plural second...
What’s the possessive of y’all? Is it y’all’s? Y’alls? Y’alls’s? What do all ya’ll think?
Martha talks about the hoopoe, that colorful, clownish, extremely smelly bird—with a likely linguistic connection to defrauded hedge fund investors.
