How did the term Bohemian come to be associated with literary and artistic nonconformists who live outside mainstream society? In the early 19th century, the French term La bohème was applied to the Romani people, also known as the Roma, a traditionally itinerant people who originated in Northern India, and who arrived in France via Bohemia, now part of the modern Czech Republic. The 1851 book Scènes de la vie de bohème or Scenes of Bohemian Life (Bookshop|Amazon) romanticized the life of an impoverished seamstress and her artist friends, and inspired Giacomo Puccini’s opera La bohème, which in turn helped inspire the modern musical RENT and its show-stopping number La vie bohème. This is part of a complete episode.
The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Meg in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, gets why the state highway department encourages drivers to use their blinkers when changing lanes, but placing a digital sign at the Sagamore Bridge that reads Use Ya Blinkah is, well, a lexical bridge too far. Meg’s...
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