In Ireland, if you say someone’s not as slow as he walks easy, you mean he’s a whole lot smarter than he appears. This is part of a complete episode.
In Ireland, the word omadhaun means “a foolish person.” This is part of a complete episode.
Growing up in Jamaica, a woman used to hear her fashion-designer mother invoke this phrase to indicate that something was good enough, even if it was flawed: “A man on a galloping horse wouldn’t see it.” Variations include...
A Washington, D.C., caller says her dad would console her with the saying “Don’t worry, it will be better before you’re married.” Which is really less a heartfelt consolation than it is a better way to say, get over it. The...
The terms anyhoo, or anywho, signaling a conversational transition, are simply variants of anyhow, and originated in Ireland. This is part of a complete episode.
If we’re talking about the whole lot of something, we call it the whole kit and kaboodle. But what’s a kaboodle? In Dutch, a “kit en boedel” refer to a house and everything in it. For the sake of the English idiom, we just...