Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the...
When a British tabloid reporter writing about a crocodile attack needed a synonym for crocodile, he went with knobbly monster, now a joking term for similarly creative ways of avoiding repetition. Juliet and Matthew Maguire, described by The...
Spredge is a portmanteau word, a blend of sprayed and edge, and refers to decorative spraying of the edges of book pages, a trend in book design. These are historically similar to fore-edge paintings. This is part of a complete episode.
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...
The distinctive dialect of Ocracoke Island is lovingly explored in the new book Language and Life on Ocracoke: The Living History of the Brogue (Bookshop|Amazon) by North Carolina State professors Jeffrey Reaser and Walt Wolfram and fourth...
English spelling is messy to say the least, and a delightful new book by Gabe Henry recounts the long history of attempts to simplify English spelling. It’s called Enough is Enuf: Our Failed Attempts to Make English Easier to Spell...
