Why does the term vegetarian cause so much confusion? Some people assume it means avoiding red meat but still eating chicken. And is there a term for a vegetarian who also eats fish and poultry? Plus, screwball comedies from the 1930s mix slapstick humor and clever dialogue. But how’d they get the name screwball? And if you’ve ever wondered when exactly pigs fly, how about… on Saint Never’s Day! Also, ahead of the curve vs. ahead of the curb, cute aggression, That burns my onions and That frosts my cookies, drinking black cows and brown cows, another take-off quiz, pollopescatarian, skutch, avellaneous, and I had one gunch, but the eggplant over there.
This episode first aired March 21, 2026.
How About St. Never’s Day? Is St. Never’s Day Good For You?
In English, you can express skepticism with the classic saying when pigs fly. In Tagalog, a similar sentiment is expressed with a phrase that translates “when the crow turns white, when the heron turns black,” and there’s a Hungarian phrase that translates as “when red snow falls.” German speakers invoke Sankt-Nimmerleins-Tag or “St. Never’s Day.”
Will We Drop the “20” in the 2000s Like We Did 19 in the 1900s?
Dax in Santa Cruz, California, wonders: Now that we’re into the 21st century, when will people stop saying that initial 20 when referring to a year such as 2028 the way we dropped the 19 in the term 1980s and just started referring to the ’80s?
That Burns My Onions!
A listener in Unadilla, New York, says her husband, whose family is French-Canadian, uses the phrase That burns my onions when something irritates him. There are several kitchen-related metaphors used to express anger, including that steams my clams, that fries my bacon, that burns my bacon, that burns my grits, or that frosts my cookies. However, in the case of burns my onions, the onions may function as a euphemism for similarly shaped body parts such as the buttocks or male genitalia, much like that burns my ass, scorches my ass, burns my butt, or burns my guts.
Ahead of the Curve or Curb?
Is it ahead of the curve or ahead of the curb? The original and far more common phrase is ahead of the curve. The curve in question is the kind plotted on a graph, specifically to represent the power produced by a machine. In aeronautics, one wants to be ahead of the power curve, which means there’s more margin for a pilot to maneuver. Being behind the power curve is a potentially dangerous situation.
So Cute, It Wouldn’t Hurt If I Put It in My Eye
In Japanese, an irresistibly cute baby might be described with an expression that translates as “Even if I put it in my eye, it wouldn’t hurt.” It’s a form of what psychologists call cute aggression, or the overwhelming urge to squeeze, crush, or nibble something that seems impossibly adorable.
Another Trying Take-Off Puzzle To Try
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a take-off puzzle involving the letters V and W. Each sentence clues two words, one of which has lost either a V or a W. For example, what two words does the following sentence suggest? He plugged his guitar into the loudspeaker and began an improvised intro.
Why Is “Vegetarian” a Concept That Escapes Some People?
Ilima in Vancouver, Canada, reports not everyone understands when she tells them she’s vegetarian. Some people assume, for example, that she doesn’t eat red meat but may enjoy chicken. Part of the issue may involve what linguists call prototype theory. If you’re asked to think of a bird, the image that pops into your head is likely something that resembles a robin or a sparrow, not a penguin or an ostrich, even though those animals are birds as well. Our mental groupings often have central prototypes of very common, ordinary items, and then fuzzier edges of rarer, more unusual items, so when it comes to meat, there’s the prototype of beef and pork, but then less clearly delineated categories of animal flesh, such as fish, shellfish, and chicken. Many people avoid red meat, but make exceptions for some of the other varieties of meat. Sometimes there’s a similar lack of clarity when it comes to vegan versus vegetarian. Someone whose consumption of animal flesh is limited to fish is a pescatarian. Is there a specific word for someone who eats poultry and fish but not red meat? Pollopescatarian, maybe?
Just the Tips of the Hippo’s Ears
In English, the tip of the iceberg refers metaphorically to a small visible part of something immense. In Afrikaans, there’s a phrase suggesting the same thing that translates as “the tips of the hippo’s ears.”
Why “Screwball” in “Screwball Comedy”?
Screwball was originally a sports term referring to the looping, irregular path of a ball in games such as cricket, tennis, and baseball. The term was popularized in the 1930s by baseball pitcher Carl Hubble’s corkscrew-like throw that made him a national sensation. Around the same time, the term screwball naturally came to be applied to those zany Hollywood movies now called screwball comedies.
Root Beer Floats and Black Cows
A listener in Colby, Wisconsin, says that growing up, she called a drink with ice cream in root beer a black cow. But when she moved to Wisconsin, she found that the locals called the same beverage a root beer float. The era of drugstore fountains and soda jerk slang led to lots of colorful names for these bubbly beverages, including brown cow (chocolate ice cream in root beer), purple cow (grape soda and vanilla ice cream), orange cow (orange soda and vanilla ice cream). Other colorful drink names include mud fizz and black-and-white. In Australia and New Zealand, where ice cream and soda drinks are called spiders, you can have a lime spider or an orange spider. In some Spanish speaking countries, a cola-flavored drink with ice cream is a vaca negra or vaca preta, both of which mean “black cow.”
Not TB or Not TB, Let’s Not TB
Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection (Bookshop|Amazon) is a powerful and fascinating look at the history of the disease and how its persistence continues to shape global health. The author, John Green, writes movingly about his own struggles as well, and the challenges of writing in general. Green is also the author of the wildly popular young adult novel The Fault in Our Stars (Bookshop|Amazon).
Can You Have the Color “Hazel Blue”?
When lexicographers look at linguistic corpora, they find that the color name hazel is most often followed by the word brown. The descriptive term hazel blue, as in hazel blue eyes, is rarely used. If you ever get tired of using the word hazel, you could always reach for the word avellaneous, which means the same thing.
When the Fish Roost in the Trees
A Vietnamese phrase suggesting the impossibility of something occurring translates as “when the loach lays eggs at the top of the banyan tree,” a loach being a bottom-dwelling fish.
Had One Grunch, but the Eggplant Over There
Roger from New Orleans, Louisiana, recalls that at odd moments in a conversation his father-in-law would toss in a puzzling non sequitur: I had one gunch, but the eggplant over there. That was probably a misunderstanding or misremembering of the catchphrase phrase I had one grunch, but the eggplant over there, popularized in the 1950s by MAD magazine. The catchphrase originated in a 1951 book called In One Head and Out the Other (Amazon) by humorist Roger Price, co-inventor of Mad Libs. In it, Price jokingly advocated what he called the Avoidism philosophy and featured a character named Clayton Slope who “had a clever trick of saying any conceivable sentence so that it sounded like ‘I had one grunch but the eggplant over there.’”
Don’t Be a Skutch
Brittany in Green Coast Springs, Florida, says that when she was grumpy or irritated as a child, her mother would say a phrase that sounded like Don’t be such a scooch. This bit of Italian-American slang, often rendered as skutch, denotes a “pest” or “nuisance” and comes from Italian scocciare, meaning “to pester.”
This episode is hosted by Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett, and produced by Stefanie Levine.
Books Mentioned in the Episode
| Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection by John Green (Bookshop|Amazon) |
| The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (Bookshop|Amazon) |
| In One Head and Out the Other by Roger Price (Amazon) |
