After our conversation about families’ nicknames for household appliances, Luke in Shutesbury, Massachusetts, tells the story of a gesture that evolved in his own family to indicate it’s snack time. This is part of a complete episode.
Marian from Schroon Lake, New York, says her family plays an egg-tapping game after every Easter egg hunt. Each player takes an egg and taps it against someone else’s, hoping that their own egg won’t crack. The egg that survives a round...
Barney from Carmel, Indiana, says his family always used the term schniddles to refer to e teeny bits of detritus left on the table after snipping paper snowflakes. It’s most likely a variant of schnibbles, a far more common term for...
In another episode, we discussed the apparent lack of a single English word that means “give someone something to drink” in the same way that feed means to “give someone food to eat.” A listener points out that in Hebrew...
On The Great British Baking Show (its US name; it’s called the Great British Bake Off in the UK, but bake-off is trademarked in the US), a contestant confessed he had not a Scooby Doo about how to make a particular recipe. By that he meant he...
Kadee, a Texas sixth-grader, wonders about how to pronounce the word caramel. There are at least seven different ways to pronounce the name of this gooey treat, including some with two and three syllables. This is part of a complete episode.