Inspired by Noah Webster’s spelling reform, Quiz Guy John Chaneski came up with a puzzle that involves removing the letter U from one word to form another. For example, what two words are clued by the following statement? “I used to live...
John in Williamsburg, Virginia, ponders whether English is the linguistic equivalent of the Borg, dominating and consuming all languages its path. There’s nothing inherent in English that makes it superior to or more likely to win out over...
John in Brattleboro, Vermont, is pondering words and phrases that change their meaning when they move from one language to another. For example, in Germany the English phrase public viewing doesn’t have to do with a wake, but a live sporting...
James from Trabuco Canyon, California, learns that there’s a proper way to spell the letters of the alphabet. The letter J is spelled jay and H is spelled aitch. His own name would be spelled out as jay aye em ee ess. The letter Y is spelled...
Emily from Madison, Wisconsin, has three nieces and a nephew, and wonders if there’s a gender-neutral term for the group of them, in the same way cousins can designate one or two genders. German has the single word Geschwisterkind, meaning...
What’s the linguistic connection between pretend and pretension or pretentious? They all go back the Latin praetendere, meaning to put something forward. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “How Do “Pretend” and...