Colette Hiller’s Colossal Words for Kids: 75 Tremendous Words: Neatly Defined to Stick in the Mind (Bookshop|Amazon) uses clever rhymes to help children learn big, fun-to-say words like magnanimous, discombobulated, and acquiesce. This...
Following up on our discussion of the really big word you ever learned, some listeners responded with antidisestablishmentarianism, a word rarely seen except in, well, discussions of big words. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
What’s the first really big word you remember learning? For one listener, the word was conflagration. For Martha, it was logical, a word she repeated after watching “Sylvester the Cat” cartoons, followed in short order by...
After our conversation about a verbose admonition to use short words, a Tallahassee, Florida, man called with a version he learned as a boy: Do you have the audacity to doubt my veracity? Or even to insinuate that I would prevaricate? While...

