ShowSegments

These are discrete parts, or segments, of whole episodes from the radio show A Way with Words. Each episode has about ten to 15 segments. If you click on segment names, you should find a playable audio file where you can listen to just that segment without having to seek through a whole episode.

Norn Words like Gruggy and Skump

The haunting new novel Clear (Bookshop|Amazon) by Carys Davies is set amid the Scottish Clearances of the 19th century, a relentless program of forced evictions that drove whole communities of tenant farmers off the land. The story concerns a...

A Chicken’s Dream

A listener who spent years in Ethiopia and Eritrea learning the Tigrinya language shares two sayings he learned there, both having to do with poultry. One translates as, “In its own good time an egg will walk on its own legs.” The other...

Corny, and Jokes in Your Seed Catalogs

The adjective corny describes someone or something “unsophisticated” or “naive.” This sense of corny goes back at least as far as the 1920s. Seed catalogs of the time often contained bits of goofy jokes and broad humor...

Alley-Oop and Hoopla

Michelle in Williamsburg, Virginia, wonders about the origin of alley-oop!, which she says when hoisting her toddler. It’s from French allez, the imperative of aller meaning “to go” and houp or hop, an onomatopoeic utterance made...