Advice about college essays from the winner of a top prize for children’s literature: Kelly Barnhill encourages teens to write about experiences that are uniquely their own, from a point of view that is theirs and no one else’s. Plus, why do we say...
Is it ahead of the curve or ahead of the curb? The original and far more common phrase is ahead of the curve. The curve in question is the kind plotted on a graph, specifically to represent the power produced by a machine. In aeronautics, one wants...
The brand-new, seventh edition of The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) is now out, and has been embiggened with 500 new words — including embiggen, pranayama, fauxhawk, and eggcorn. This is part of a complete episode...
How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
Jack in Spokane, Washington, wonders which phrase is correct when talking about improvising: play it by ear or play it by year? Although play it by ear is the original version and by far the most common one, play it by year sounds plausible enough...
The term mind-boggling describes something that has a powerful effect on the mind. Sometimes it’s misunderstood as mind-bottling, an eggcorn popularized by a Will Farrell movie. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Mind-Boggling vs...