The verb greissel, also spelled greisle, means to “disgust,” “sicken” or “irritate,” as in That greissels me or I stayed greisseled about that for a long time. Greissel comes from a family of German words that describe things that are repellent, like gruselig, “creepy,” and grässlich, “horrible,” which are distantly related to such English words as gruesome and grisly. This is part of a complete episode.
More from this show
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...