Audrey in Fort Smith, Arkansas, is curious about the term East Jesus Nowhere meaning a nonexistent, faraway place. Other such fanciful place names include East Overshoe, South Burlap, West Burlap, West Hell, South Succotash, Ginny Gall, and...
Katie in East Thetford, Vermont, shares medical slang and jargon from her work in the neonatal intensive care room at a hospital, including doorbell for “an alarm”; giraffe, “a special bed with controls for heat and...
In his book African Religions and Philosophy, Kenyan-born philosopher John Samuel Mbiti describes the East and Central African concepts of sasha, those ancestors who remain alive in human memory, and zamani, the vast ocean of time into which...
Pearl, a youngster in Massachusetts, asks how to pronounce the name of the East Indian spice turmeric. The accent falls on the first syllable and pronouncing that first R sound is optional. This is part of a complete episode.
A middle-school teacher and her students in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, have a question about one girl’s pronunciation of the word bagel. Is this round yeast roll with a hole in the middle pronounced BAY-gull, BAG-ull, or BEG-ull? Although...
Why do we call a peanut a goober? The word comes from the Bantu languages of East Africa. This is part of a complete episode.