Aeneas in Las Cruces, New Mexico, describes his family’s traditional way of razzing someone who just had a haircut. They shout Rinctums! (also spelled Rinktums!), and proceed to give the person a rough knuckle-rubbing on the back of their head, unless that newly shorn person beats them to it, yelling No rinctums!. A 1921 article about this newly popular practice at the University of Texas describes how students with a new haircut try to avoid these noogies with a preemptive shout of vincure rinktums or vincure scrapeings [sic]. 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...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Martha and Grant send occasional messages with language headlines, event announcements, linguistic tidbits, and episode reminders. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
