McPaul lives in Montclair, New Jersey, but grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, where several casual restaurants spelled the name of their establishment as dinor rather than diner, as in Stan’s Dinor. This spelling variant is largely limited to...
Dan from Atlantic Beach, Florida, grew up in southwestern Ohio, where he and his friends and family referred to their neighborhoods as plats, as in “What plat do you live in?” To plat a place is jargon for the process of making a...
Barney from Carmel, Indiana, says his family always used the term schniddles to refer to e teeny bits of detritus left on the table after snipping paper snowflakes. It’s most likely a variant of schnibbles, a far more common term for...
A third-grade teacher from Michigan reports that one of her young students pronounced the word crayon as “crown.” There’s more than one regional variant in the United States, though. Others include “CRAY-ahn,”...
Megan in Denver, Colorado, wonders about an exclamation she’s used all her life, which she suspects is spelled criminiddly. It’s another variant of that mild oath criminently, also rendered as criminetly, criminitlies, crimenightie...
Lucy, a middle-school student in San Diego, California, is puzzled by a phrase her mother uses when something is not quite up to snuff or falls short of the mark: close, but no tomato. It appears to be a variant of close, but no cigar, a phrase...