Salutations and welcome!
If you missed the last weekend's thrilling episode of A Way with Words, you missed car chases, gunfights, and your co-hosts leaping from high-speed trains!
Alas, no. But there was a lot of chatter about the Ig Nobel Prizes for language and literature and some de-puzzlement about the words "insegrevious" and "paratereseomaniac."
https://waywordradio.org/insegrevious/
The country expressions "turkey tail" and "I'm gonna snatch you bald-headed" also came up and we squared off on whether to use "website" or "Web site." Or is it "web site"?
Thanks to everyone who wrote in about where to put the punctuation when using quotation marks. We'll get into more detail in a couple of weeks, but we hope it suffices for now to say we were talking only about periods and commas. There are other rules for bangers and interrogatives, and still others for computer code. And even more rules for walking down the street with a lady.
In last week's show, the music you hear when we're talking about whether a new music release should or can be called a CD, album, or record, is from the caller himself. It's John Dehner and the Enthusiasts. The band has an alt.country sound in the tradition of Uncle Tupelo or Son Volt. You can find their web site and sample tunes here:
Speaking of music, we've mentioned before that our quiz guy Greg Pliska is also a composer. His current album is "September Songs: Music for Film." (We think "Rockville 1935" is particularly moving.) You can hear his beautiful music and add him as a MySpace friend here:
http://www.myspace.com/gregpliska
Next week, Greg gives us a quiz about chemistry. It'll be like dumping sodium in water. Ka-boom! We'll also talk about the expression "enough money to burn a wet dog" and whether "biffy" is really a word meaning "outhouse."
Don't forget that you can call us or write us even when we're off the air. We listen to all the voice mail and read every email message, even if we can't reply to everyone.
Cheers,
Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett
