Brian from Lafayette, Indiana, wonders why chicken is abbreviated CHX in the restaurant industry. Using X as a substitute or shortener has a long history. Medieval scribes sometimes drew a line through the final stroke of an abbreviated word. This...
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...
Vivian, a high-schooler in Indianapolis, Indiana, asks why number becomes no. instead of something with a u. The abbreviation comes through Latin numero, an ablative form of numerus, and scribes shortened it with an o plus a mark showing that...
Why do so many people in the Keystone State refer to it with the letters P-A rather than sounding out all the syllables in Pennsylvania? Especially when they say a city in that state and then Pee Ay? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
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...
