A flashlight doesn’t flash. It provides a steady beam of light. So why is it called a flashlight? The earliest versions lit up only briefly before the batteries gave out and required a recharge, so they were literally “flash lights.” Years later, in 1916, Eveready flashlight company held a nationwide contest to coin a new word for the new, improved version. The winning entry?Daylo. Obviously, daylo didn’t catch on. The old word, flashlight, stuck around in the United States, while in the United Kingdom, this illumination aid was called an electric torch or later, simply a torch.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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