Kirsten in Evanston, Illinois, reports that when she and her husband lived in a co-op at the University of Michigan, they and their friends used the acronym GUFF for “general use free food,” which anyone was free to eat. The word GUFF proved so handy that they still use it today, and the word has extended to mean items that are fair game for anyone, be it food or beer or other things such as detergent. 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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