Temperature blankets are a visual and tactile mirror of the day’s weather. Knitters use specific shades of yarn to match daily temperatures, creating a colorful, cozy record of weather across time. Plus, a new book chronicles the history and...
The Great Passage is an anime about a young man who steps up to take over a project to edit a new dictionary, eventually becoming a full-fledged lexicographer. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Anime About Dictionaries”...
Polyglots sometimes experience faulty language selection, accidentally reaching for words from a language different from the one they’re speaking. Listener Phoebe Liu of Seattle grew up speaking Chinese, then learned English, and studied...
Language serves as a generational marker, leaving speakers of different ages with mutual misunderstandings of pop culture references and idioms. We look at the historical lack of distinction between the words done and finished, clarify the origins...
fan service n. a feature, inside joke, or obscure reference included in entertainment primarily to please a core fan group, or a work of entertainment expressly created for that purpose; (hence) in anime and manga, visuals which include nude or semi...