Will in Austin, Texas, feels a little odd every time he uses the expression funnily enough. Although the phrase is grammatically correct, it still feels awkward to say. In part, that’s because the adjective funny ends in the letter Y, but surprisingly enough the adverbs sillily, jollily, uglily, and friendlily were formed the same way from silly, jolly, ugly, and friendly. Those adverbial forms aren’t at all that common today, but they’ve been around since the 16th century. Also, contrary to what sticklers might insist, using the word fun as an adjective is perfectly fine. This is part of a complete episode.
After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New...
Debbie from Crawfordsville, Florida, says that when she and her husband reach an impasse while working on something, they’ll say Let’s grok about it, which they use to mean “Let’s think about it.” Grok was coined by...
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