The phrases “Well, I swan!” and “Well, I swannee!” are genteel substitutes for swearing. Where do those phrases come from? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “I Swannee!” Hello, you have A Way with...
“Redd up the table!” A California listener says he remembers hearing that all the time when growing up in Iowa, but now that he’s on the West Coast, no one has any idea what he’s talking about. You’ll sometimes see it...
A Pittsburgh woman reports that when she went away to college, she was surprised to find people correcting her grammar when she’d say things like “the car needs washed” or “the kids need picked up.” She wonders if...
Evan from Dallas, Texas, asks whether decimate should only mean destroying one-tenth of something or whether it can mean generally destroying it. The word goes back to a Roman military punishment in which one in ten mutinous soldiers was killed, but...
It’s a grammatical question that trips up even the best writers sometimes: Is it who or whom? A physician says he likes the sentiment in a colleague’s email signature, but he’s not sure it’s 100% grammatical. The sentence:...
Why do some people pronounce the word wash as “warsh”? Martha and Grant discuss the so-called “intrusive R” and why it makes people say “warsh” instead of “wash” and “Warshington” instead...