Matt from Waukesha, Wisconsin, has been discussing the words barely and nearly with his 10-year-old son Simon. They know the two words are nearly alike, but how exactly? This is part of a complete episode.
Nancy in Dallas, Texas, shares a funny story about a preschooler’s misunderstanding of the expression in the meantime, meaning “in the interim.” The mean in meantime derives from a Latin medius, “in the middle,” the...
Danil, a ninth-grader in Traverse City, Michigan, says his class is curious about the term baby blue. This color name apparently has to do with the pale eye color of some newborn babies. A poem reprinted in newspapers across the United States in the...
Gwen, a sixth-grader in Rosalia, asks for clarification about the meaning and proper usage of the word indifferent. This is part of a complete episode.
Eight-year-old Violet moved from Lexington, Kentucky to Zionsville, Indiana, and found other kids don’t share her pronunciation of sprinkles as ‘spræŋk(ə)ls, rhyming with “rankles.” Who’s right? This is part of a...
Jimmy and his high-school classmates wonder about the pronunciation of words like zooplankton, zoology, and zoological. The traditional pronunciation for many scientific terms that start with zoo- is to use a long o rather than an oo sound. The...