Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...
David from Black Mountain, North Carolina, is fond of the Spanish term that originally meant “someone who shares the same name as another person” (which is one of the meanings of “namesake” in English) and has expanded to...
A Delaware listener recounts a funny story about visiting a friend in Maryland who asked him to retten up the house while she went to the store. He had no idea what she meant, so he just lounged around while she was gone — only to find out later...
The word bummer originates from the German bummler, meaning “loafer,” as in a lazy person. In English, the word bum had a similar meaning, and by the late 1960s, phrases like bum deal or bum rap lent themselves to the elongated bummer...