In Greek myth, the sirens were women with the bodies of birds whose song was so alluring that it enticed men to their death. In the early 19th century, French engineer and physicist Charles Cagniard de la Tour built a device that sent blasts of air through perforated metal disks to make a loud, wailing noise. Having found that the device also produced sound even when submerged, he called his invention the sirène, the source of the English word for such a device, siren. 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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