David from Nashville, Tennessee, wonders about a word he’s heard only in that city: gherming. Someone who ghermsmakes a habit of pestering country-music celebrities or acting overly familiar with them in public. Nashville songwriter Marc Alan Barnette has observed that when a friend was being wheeled into a hospital emergency room, he was even ghermed by a nurse trying to elbow her way into the industry. The word’s origin is unclear, although it may be related to the term gurn, meaning to “contort one’s face,” possibly in an obsequious manner. This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
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