Sara in Madison, Wisconsin, was reading an old edition of The Joy of Cooking and came across a recipe that described a cake’s ingredients as earrings for an elephant. She couldn’t discern whether the authors meant that was a good thing or a bad thing. The cake in question is Orange-Filled Cake, and the recipe calls for orange juice in the batter plus orange filling and orange icing, then adds, Earrings for an elephant with no apologies! Apparently the idea is that using so much orange flavoring is like adding something extra to an animal that’s already quite extra indeed. 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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