Melissa in Greensboro, North Carolina, has been sparring with the Gen Z members of her family over the shifting meanings of words. Her kids use aesthetic as an adjective to mean “aesthetically pleasing,” as in That’s so aesthetic. They also refer to...
Youngsters want to know: What’s the difference between barely and nearly, and what’s so clean about a whistle, anyway? Plus, adults recount some misunderstandings from when they were knee-high to a grasshopper. Kids do come up with some surprisingly...
A high-schooler in Indianapolis, Indiana, wonders why the word number is abbreviated as no., given that there’s no letter O in the word. The answer lies in the Latin word numero, which is the ablative form of the Latin word for number, numerus. The...
A high-schooler in Indianapolis, Indiana, wonders why the word number is abbreviated as no. when there’s no letter O in the word. The answer lies in the Latin word numero, which is the ablative form of the Latin word for number, numerus. This is...
Is the word mac actually an acronym for macaroni and cheese? No, just a shortening of the full three-word-term. If it mac were an acronym, however, it would be a recursive acronym, or one that refers to itself. This is part of a complete episode...
Younger voices take the lead! Curious kid investigators start us off exploring the medieval origins of XOXO, the surprising “all correct” joke that gave us OK, and the linguistic evolution of words like terrific and vintage. From defining physical...
