Paula in Cheyenne, Wyoming, shares a funny story about a little girl who misunderstood the word hummingbird. This is part of a complete episode.
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
Anthony in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, is suspicious of a story about the origin of the phrase win by landslide. According to local lore, the Wyoming towns of Jackson and Kelly competed to become the county seat of Teton County. In 1927, a massive...
As a Wyoming caller noted in an earlier episode, through-hikers on routes like the Appalachian Trail give each other trail names — jocular appellations that stick throughout their trek. The origin stories of several of these are told in the book...
How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
Niesey from Laramie, Wyoming, is curious about the word mucky-muck, meaning “an important person,” and often “someone self-important.” Usually spelled muckety-muck, or muckamuck, it’s associated with the...