A remarkable new documentary explores the world of amateur and professional mermaiding and the language bubbling up within it. Some mermaiding enthusiasts greet each other with a friendly “Shello!” Plus, an adoptee wonders what to call...
While reading a translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (Bookshop|Amazon), a listener is puzzled by the sentence For the most part these omniscient gentlemen are out at elbow, and receive a salary of seventeen rubles a month. What...
If something is saucered and blowed, it’s completed. The expression derives from an old tradition of pouring a bit of boiling coffee or tea into a deep saucer, and blowing on the liquid to make it cool enough to drink. This is part of a...
Rafaella in Wausau, Wisconsin wonders about unwritten rules of etiquette regarding when it is okay as something of an outsider to talk about certain subjects within a family. The rules depend in part on in-group and out-group dynamics within the...
Responding to our conversation about slang expressions for traveling by foot, a listener says that while growing up in Montreal, Canada, in the 1980s, she and her friends would refer to that mode of transportation as going by BMW, an acronym for...
Margaret from Huntsville, Alabama, says her mother used to tell her to hurry up by saying to get something done with a burning needle and a hot thread. The more common expression is with a hot needle and burning thread, meaning to do something...