Tom from Conshohocken, Pennsylvania, notices something odd while doing a tick check after a walk in the woods: Both tick and check can mean “a checkmark,” making the compound a kind of accidental synonym sandwich. The linguistic term for a word...
When describing shoes, which is correct: close-toe, close-toed, or closed-toe? And what about forms of footwear that leave those pedal digits exposed? Open-toe shoes? Open-toed shoes? This is part of a complete episode. Hello, you have A Way with...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski is puzzling over one-word compound synonyms. For example, in the sentence While pretty, the bouquet was dominated by a rather large starblossom, the word starblossom might clue what tall plant that many associate with Vincent...
Scarecrow and pickpocket are compound words that name things and people by describing what they do. Such nouns were especially popular centuries ago, when quake-breech meant a coward, a saddle-goose was a fool, a scrape-gut was a violinist, and...
The term dog pound sounds a lot more menacing than animal shelter, until you learn that pound simply has to do with the idea of an enclosed space, as does a pond, which is often formed by enclosing a space and filling it with water. This is part of...
Phthalate, a compound in chemistry, got us thinking about other words with ph and th right next to each other. This is part of a complete episode. Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Susan from San Antonio, Texas. Hi, Susan. Welcome to the...