Chickens give more than eggs, meat, and feathers—they give language!
Martha shares listener email about what to call that icy buildup in your car’s wheel wells. Fenderbergs, anyone? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Fenderbergs” A while back we had a call from someone who was asking...
Hey, hey, hey! It's another fat newsletter from "A Way with Words"! We never run out of things to talk about. Take this past weekend's show, for example. We tracked down the history of "Polly wanna cracker." It turns out...
In an earlier episode, the hosts heard from a woman who, as a teenager, was scolded by her grandmother for wearing a skirt that Granny said was almost up to possible. The woman wondered about that phrase’s meaning and origin. Grant shares...
Fess up: do you have a pet name for your car? How about your computer? Martha and Grant discuss the urge to give nicknames to inanimate objects in our lives. Also, why do we speak of vetting a political candidate? And what in the world is a zoo...
Sketchy, meaning creepy, alarming, or suspicious, probably grew out of older uses such as sketchy details for something unclear or poorly explained, and from colloquial sketchy for insubstantial or imperfect. After our earlier look at the word, Gwen...