If someone urges you to spill the tea, they probably don’t want you tipping over a hot beverage. Originally, the tea here was the letter T, as in “truth.” To spill the T means to “pass along truthful information.” Plus...
When you had sleepovers as a child, what did you call the makeshift beds you made on the floor? In some places, you call those bedclothes and blankets a pallet. This word comes from an old term for “straw.” And: What’s the story...
During the late 19th and early 20th century, thousands of volunteers helped crowdsource the Oxford English Dictionary. This venerable reference work includes citations sent in by inventors, eccentrics, scientists and educators, an Arctic explorer —...
A Delaware listener wonders about her grandparents’ use of the phrase I beg your pardon, which sounds a bit old-fashioned to her and her peers. Her grandparents were prim and proper, and used this expression whenever they felt slighted or...
John in Dallas, Texas, wonders about the phrase Hail fellow well met. This expression combines two old phrases. The first is hail, fellow!, once a warm casual greeting. To be hail fellow with someone meant “to be on friendly terms with”...
An Alabama listener says her grandmother would express astonishment with the phrase They! My goodness! This exclamation, which is common in her grandmother’s native Appalachia, is probably an R-less pronunciation of There! as in Look there...