Wilson in Charleston, South Carolina, stopped using the term conversate after being told it’s not a real word. On the contrary, conversate is well-established in Black English as a verb that suggests speaking in a register that’s warmer...
The English adjective frivolous comes from a Latin word meaning “silly,” “empty,” or “trifling.” A back-formation from frivolous produced the lesser-known verb frivol, meaning “to do something unimportant,” “to waste time,” or “to squander.” Someone...
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.