You know that feeling when you walk into a shopping mall and are so overwhelmed by all the distractions you lose track of what you came there for? That’s the Gruen Transfer or Gruen Effect, named for Victor Gruen, the architect who designed the first suburban open-air shopping center in the United States. Naming expert Nancy Friedman writes about this and other matters of onomastics and branding on her Substack, Fritinancy. 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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