To secrete means “to produce and discharge a fluid,” a back-formation from secretion. But a similarly spelled verb means “to deposit in a hiding place.” For both verbs, the pronunciation of the past tense, secreted, requires a long e in the middle...
Conversate, a variation of the word converse, is part of African-American Vernacular English, but with a slightly different meaning. To conversate is “to converse raucously.” This word goes back to at least 1811, and it’s well-known to many African...
A listener in Brazil challenges Martha’s pronunciation of the odd English word antipodes. Their email exchange leads Martha to muse about a favorite collection of poems, where she first encountered this word.
