In Cockney rhyming slang, apples and pears is a synonym for “stairs,” and dustbin lids means kids. Plus, sniglets are clever coinages for things we don’t already have words for. Any guesses what incogsneeto means? It’s 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...
Kit from Pulaski, Tennessee, recalls that when he played hide-and-seek as a youngster in Miami, Florida, the call he and his friends used at the end of the game to draw everyone out of hiding was All y’all come in free!. However, he’s...
Bud in Council Bluffs, Iowa, says when he was fishing but no one was catching anything, an acquaintance observed, We must be holding our mouths wrong. There are several versions of that expression, including You must be holding your mouth wrong or...
Stunt performers in movies have their own jargon for talking about their dangerous work. In New York City, the slang term brick means “cold,” and dumb brick means “really cold.” Plus: the East and Central African tradition...
A Turkish proverb translates as “If your mouth is burned by milk, you blow before you eat yogurt,” meaning that if you’ve had a bad experience with one thing, you’ll be cautious when encountering something similar. This is...