Why would we describe something as having a meteoric rise when meteors fall to the ground? The adjective meteoric refers to the speed and duration of a meteor, not its direction. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
Nadine in San Antonio, Texas, disagrees with her boyfriend, who insists that the word surprise suggests something inherently good, so it’s impossible to call something a bad surprise. A quick look at data from the Brigham Young University corpora of...
You pick up what you think a glass of water and take a sip, but it turns out to be Sprite. What’s the word for that sensation when you’re expecting one thing and taste something else? Also, slang from college campuses, like ratchet and...
The SAT is cutting depreciatory and membranous from the verbal section of the test, but don’t go insane in the membrane—there’s been no depreciation in knowledge among the youth. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Jeff in Dallas noticed that an early English pre-printed Christmas card read Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. It points to a broader history of merry. In 1800s American English, merry was common for exuberant, joyful pleasure, and it is cognate...