For English speakers of a certain age, film at 11 is a slang phrase means “You’ll hear the details later.” It’s a reference to the days before 24-hour cable news, when newscasters would read headlines during the day promoting...
Those of us in the United States and Britain may be separated by a common language, but we’re also separated when it comes to how we indicate numbers. A Numberphile video featuring linguist Lynne Murphy explains this in more depth. This is...
Martha’s fond of videos about Appalachian dialect, and in one she came across the expression, “I’d just as soon be in hell with my back broke,” meaning “I strongly prefer to be anywhere else.” This is part of a...
An Indianapolis, Indiana, listener says that his mother-in-law was asked by a child where she was going, would jokingly sing that she was “going to the Turkey trot trot trot, across the lot, lot, lot, feeling fine, fine, fine until...
If you simply read each letter aloud, you can see why O.U.Q.T.! U.R.A.B.U.T.! can be interpreted to mean “Oh, you cutie! You are a beauty!” A statement expressed that way with letters, numerals, or drawings is called a rebus, or, if...
The taunt neener, neener, neener is more an interjection than a noun or adjective. It belongs to a family that includes nyah-nyah and nanny-nanny-boo-boo. Brett in San Diego remembers it from Southern California playgrounds, where the melody is part...