Sean from Buffalo, New York, says that whenever someone burped, his mother would say Well, bring it up again and we’ll vote on it. There are many of these so-called wrongs of passage, such as Six more and we’ll have 7-Up! Another good one: Greetings from the interior! Sean’s father, who was from New York, used to say just like downtown, a saying we’ve discussed before, to mean something was satisfactory or excellent. This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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