Lanessa in San Antonio, Texas, remembers once when her Tennessee-born grandmother saw her grandfather coming home from work and tromping into her pristine kitchen: “What in the tarnation? You don’t have any gumption! Don’t come walking into my kitchen like that. Leave your brogans at the door!” Back in the day, the word brogan meant “a sturdy work shoe,” and may be a linguistic relative of the word brogue, referring to a “Scottish or Irish accent.” Gumption is likely related to the Scots word goam or gome, which has to do with “paying heed” or “understanding,” also the source of gormless, meaning “stupid.” Tarnation is a minced oath, form as an alteration of damnation, combined with tarnal, which is in turn adapted from eternal, with less of a connotation “everlasting” and more in the sense of “infiniteness.” This is part of a complete episode.
After an international team of scientists and staffers spent six months at a research station in Antarctica, their accents changed ever so slightly, according to an acoustic analysis by German researchers. The slang terms they shared include dingle...
Is the booty as in shake your booty related to a pirate’s booty? The booty that means “derriere” is an alteration of botty, which is itself an alteration of bottom. The booty that means “loot” or “plunder”...
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