Cassandra, who lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wonders about the rules for how to punctuate titles such as Professor and Doctor. Growing up in South Africa, she was taught that, in contrast to practice in the United States, the titles Dr, Mr, and...
Dean from Chadron, Nebraska, notes that people in his area use the term visit to mean “talk with” or “converse,” as in We sat on the porch swing visiting. This usage originated in the American South as far back as the 1860s...
Camden from Juneau, Alaska, uses the term gaffle to mean “snag,” as in to gaffle a Coke from the fridge. In his 1872 work A Dictionary of Etymology (Bookshop|Amazon), philologist Hensleigh Wedgwood notes that in a variety of languages...
Greta and Sean in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, are discussing whether the term awhile can mean “in the meantime,” as in Let’s go move your car awhile. It’s certainly used that way in many parts of Pennsylvania, reflecting German...
Nicole in Indianapolis, Indiana, has a long-running dispute with her British husband about how to pronounce the word buoy. He says it’s pronounced BOY, like buoyant, and she insists it’s BOO-ee — a difference that reflects their...
In their article “My Mother, Whenever She passed Away, She Had Pneumonia: The History and Functions of whenever,” Michael Montgomery and John Kirk discuss the “punctual” whenever, a vestige of Scots-Irish usage heard in much...
