The documentary My Beautiful Stutter follows youngsters at a summer camp run by SAY: The Stuttering Association for the Young. There young people who stutter find acceptance, support, and confidence for navigating the larger world. This is part of a...
Paige grew up in Louisiana, where she used the term pencil colors for colored pencils. Her name for these drawing instruments is likely a calque from French crayon de couleur, literally “pencil of color.” In many small towns across the...
Look up into the night sky, and imagine that you’ve never heard the term Milky Way. What would you call that glowing band of stars across the heavens? In Sweden, it’s called Vintergatan, or “Winter Street.” In Hawaii, the...
Deborah in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, remembers a phrase from her grandfather: Desperate Ambrose. He’s so desperate he would steal a hot stove. The first part is a reference to Desperate Ambrose, a character in the comic strip...
The Spanish word candado, or “padlock,” comes from Latin catenatus, meaning “chained,” also the source of the English word concatenation, which means “a series of things,” or literally “links in a chain...
Kyle in Fort Monroe, Virginia, says his family jokingly uses the term honyock to refer to “someone who acts in a silly way,” and often applies this word to politicians and bad drivers. Variously spelled, hunkyak, hunyakker, or hunyokker...
