Ross in Lyme, New Hampshire wonders what those machines that dispense tickets at the entrance to a parking garage are called. In the business, they’re referred to as ticket spitters, entry stations, or parking ticket dispensers. This is part...
When Mary from Hanover, New Hampshire, was vacationing in Alaska, she picked up a term from the locals: sucker hole. It refers to a patch of sun peeking through the clouds, which leads tourists to assume that the weather is going to clear up. The...
Baseball has a language all its own: On the diamond, a snow cone isn’t what you think it is, and three blind mice has nothing to do with nursery rhymes. And how do you describe someone who works at home while employed by a company in another...
A New Hampshire listener recalls that as a boy, when he talked friends within earshot of his mother and said referred to her as she, his mother would pipe up with “she, being the cat’s mother.” It’s an old expression...
A potch or putch is a slap, as in potch in tuchis. This term for spanking related to German Patsch, meaning “a slap.” A listener in Springfield, New Hampshire, says her family also used the term potching around to describe her...
Amber from Berlin, New Hampshire, works in a prison, and wants to know why those ominous double sets of prison doors are called by the feminine-sounding name sallyport. Going back to the 1600s, a sallyport was a fortified entrance to a military...