Jen in Denton, Texas, grew up in upstate New York hearing her Brooklyn-born parents say scutch when someone was being a pest, as in “Don’t be a scutch.” The family spelling she gives is scutch, while a more often seen Italian-American spelling is...
If you tell someone you have a set of twins, does that mean you have two kids or four kids? It depends on the meaning of the word set. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Set of Twins” Hi, you have A Way with Words. This...
Linguistic freezes, also known as binomials or irreversible pairs, are words that tend to appear in a certain order, such as now and then, black and white, or spaghetti and meatballs. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
A Denton, Texas, caller wonders: Are politicians increasingly starting sentences with the phrase “Now, look…”? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Now, Look…” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Good...
Why do the Brits pronounce the H in herbal? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Silent “H” in Herbal” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, guys. This is Kyle calling from Denton, Texas at the University of...
Back in the 1930s, airplane pilots didn’t have sophisticated instruments to tell them which way was up. When flying through clouds, they literally relied on changes in the vibrations in their seat to help them stay on course, flying by the...