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...
Say! Fellas and gals, here's another newsletter from A Way with Words. This past weekend we reran a crowd-pleasing episode from earlier this year, in which we discussed "suicide sodas," how to politely tell someone her slip is showing...

