A woman in Puyallup, Washington, disagrees with her husband about the pronunciation of avocado. She pronounces it as if it were spelled alvocado, with an L, but the standard pronunciation is ah-voh-KAH-doh. A small minority of English speakers...
A flea market is a type of bazaar, usually outdoors, where vendors of secondhand and discount goods sell their wares. But why flea market? The term probably reflects the influence of two linguistic strains: In 18th-century New York City, the Fly...
Grant and Martha discuss the L-word — or two L-words, actually: liberal and libertarian. They reflect different political philosophies, so why do they look so similar? Also, is the term expat racist? A journalist argues that the word expat carries a...
Say you have an acquaintance you always see at the dog park or the playground. But one night, you run into them at the movies, and for a moment, it’s confusing. Is there a word for that disorienting sense of someone or something being out of...
“Ix-nay on the ocolate-chay in the upboard-cay” is how you’d say “nix on the chocolate in the cupboard” in pig Latin. English speakers have a long history of inserting syllables or rearranging syllables in a word to...
For English speakers of a certain age, film at 11 is a slang phrase means “You’ll hear the details later.” It’s a reference to the days before 24-hour cable news, when newscasters would read headlines during the day promoting...