In response to our earlier conversation about the phrase to lick the cat over, meaning to repeat a laborious process, many listeners say they use the phrase lick the calf over to mean the same thing. Among the writers who have used it this way: Zora Neale Hurston. This is part of a complete episode.
Darcy calls from North Pole, Alaska, to share a saying her grandparents used when she asked for something she couldn’t have. It sounded like either You may want horns, but you’ll die mole-headed or You may want horns, but you’ll...
A Huntsville, Alabama, listener says that when someone was being abrasive or mean or defiant, her mother would say she’s got her habits on. This phrase appears in the work of many blues singers, including Lucille Bogan and Bessie Smith, and...
Lick the cat over. When I was very little, maybe 6 years old, we went to visit my father’s parents in Plant City, Florida, and my grandmother served something my mother never had – liver. I understood her to say “cat’s liver”. I remember saying to her “cat’s liver”? in disbelief, and she said yes. You can imagine my distress.