Patricia Wentworth’s 1937 mystery The Case is Closed (Bookshop|Amazon) includes a character who disparages others as being dreepy or a dreep. These words are Dreep and dreepy are Scottish dialect versions of drip and drippy and have to do with someone who’s ineffective, weak, soft, or otherwise gormless. 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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