Pat in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, says that when his brother Paul was young, he misunderstood their father’s references to Miami. Paul always thought his dad was referring to his own personal ammy, and the family still refers to that South...
Christy in Norfolk, Virginia, shares a funny story about how she and a friend failed to communicate about an invitation. The friend often mentioned that she and some pals were going to a club, assuming that Christy would understand that she was also...
Diane in Frankfort, Kentucky, says her mother always pronounced the word wash with an R sound in it. This pronunciation of wash as “warsh” reflects what linguists call the intrusive R or excrescent R, a form of what’s known as...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has clues to several rhyming pairs of words separated by the word and. For example, what do you call the technique for narrowing the aspect ratio of a wide-screen movie so it will fit on your TV screen? This is part of a...
Mark in Scranton, Pennsylvania, calls about a phrase he heard on an old detective show: drop a dime. It means “to inform on someone” or “tip off the police,” and comes from the practice of literally dropping a dime into a...
If you want to describe people who have an overly high opinion of themselves, here’s some handy Spanish slang: In Argentina, you might describe such a person as Tarzán de maceta, or “Tarzan of the flowerpot.” You might also call...