You may have used the expression, “Nobody here but us chickens!” Would you still use it if you knew its origins lie in a racist joke from the turn of the 20th century? This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
The English language has a variety of expressions referring to the excretion of moisture from the skin due to heat. There’s the verb perspire and the Yiddish borrowing schvitz. If you perspire profusely, you may sweat buckets, or be sweating like a...
A Havertown, Pennsylvania, listener wonders why her mother used to answer queries about how she was doing with phrase that sounded like either fair to midland or fair to middling. Middling has long meant “just OK” or “right in the middle,” and the...