Many common English surnames–such as Taylor, Miller, Shoemaker, Smith, and many others–tell a story about life in the Middle Ages. Two good books on the study of names, also known as onomastics, are The Surname Detective and a Dictionary of English...
In one of history’s greatest stories about yarn, Theseus famously made it back out of the deadly Minotaur’s labyrinth by unspooling a ball of yarn so he could retrace his steps. In Middle English, such rolled-up yarn was called a clewe. Eventually...
The Dictionary of American Regional English traces you-uns, a plural form of you, to the Midlands and the Ohio River Valley. But the phrase goes back a while; even Chaucer used something similar. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Where’d we get the term swan song? A caller says this expression came up in conversation just before her retirement and she wonders about its origin. Martha reads email from listeners suggesting alternatives to the word retirement. This is part of a...
You know that grammatical “rule” about not ending a sentence with a preposition? Well, who ever decided finishing off a sentence like that is a bad thing? (Personally, we think it’s one of the silliest things anyone ever came up with.)
Quick, picture a berry: Is it blue? Red? Then where’d we get the English expression brown as a berry? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Origin of Brown as a Berry” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello, this is Lou Jane. I’m from...
