Ryan in Ketchikan, Alaska, reports that a couple of friends told him they’d attend his new gallery exhibition with bells, meaning they would be there “with great enthusiasm.” The far more common phrase is to be there with bells on, indicating that someone plans to arrive “ready to celebrate.” This expression didn’t appear in English until the late 1800s, and its origin is a mystery, although one possible explanation is that it alludes to adorning horses with bells to make a sleigh ride more festive. A number of listeners have suggested morris dancing, which features bells on the performers, as a possible origin. This is part of a complete episode.
A member of the ski patrol at Vermont’s Sugarbush Resort shares some workplace slang. Boilerplate denotes hard-packed snow with a ruffled pattern that makes skis chatter, death cookies are random chunks that could cause an accident, and...
A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...
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