If you make a beeline for something, you’re taking the shortest route possible. You’re also mimicking bee-havior! After a bee has visited enough flowers to gather nectar, she flies straight back to the hive. And: Even a word like throttlebottom...
A snout-fair is a “good-looking person,” a throttlebottom is an “inept public official,” and ejectamenta is “material spewed from a volcano.” Each month, members of a Facebook group for calligraphy enthusiasts receive a list of around 30 such words...
Do children still need to learn cursive? Following in our first discussion of whether cursive should be taught, many listeners now in their twenties say they didn’t learn cursive in school and have trouble reading it. Others view it as a lost art...
Does your handwriting look like chicken scratches, calligraphy, or maybe something in between? Martha and Grant discuss the state of penmanship, the phenomenon linguists call creaky voice, euphemisms for going to the bathroom, and the New England...

