For a deep dive into the world of emoji, check out Keith Houstonβs new book, Face with Tears of Joy: A Natural History of the Emoji (Bookshop|Amazon). Emoji offer whatβs called paralinguistic restitution, that is, restoring to written language...
Vlad in Tucson, Arizona wonders: How did white dog come to be a slang term for whiskey thatβs not yet been sufficiently aged? It probably has to do with the natural coloration process, where the whiskey starts out clear (or “white”) and...
The wise Italian saying La mamma degli scemi Γ¨ sempre incinta translates as βThe mother of fools is always pregnant.β This is part of a complete episode.
How do you pronounce the word macabre, meaning βmorbidβ or βgruesomeβ? The word may go back to the ancient Book of Maccabees, commemorated in medieval France with the danse de MacabrΓ©, often depicted in art as skeletons leading every type of person...
The owner of a Berlin, Maryland, produce stand wants to know: When a customer is buying four ears of corn, should they say I have four corn or I have four ears of corn? Corn is a mass noun that can also be counted as a plural, just as we might say I...
The new book Gesture: A Slim Guide (Bookshop|Amazon) by linguist Lauren Gawne includes some fascinating studies about the movements that accompany spoken or signed language. In one, participants were asked to learn rules of a game, then explain...