In an earlier episode, we discussed linguistic false friends, those words in foreign languages that look like familiar English words, but mean something quite different. Martha reads an email response from a listener who learned the hard way that in...
The hosts and a listener in Grand Rapids, Michigan, trade some 17th-century insults. For more, check out these references: Gargantua and English Words With Native Roots And With Greek, Latin, Or Romance Suffixes by George Albert Nicholson. This is...
Riddle time! What English word can have four of its five letters removed and still retain its original pronunciation? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Letter Removal Riddle” Hey Grant, I have a word riddle for you. Oh...
Stories From The Onion In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from...
Evan from Dallas, Texas, asks whether decimate should only mean destroying one-tenth of something or whether it can mean generally destroying it. The word goes back to a Roman military punishment in which one in ten mutinous soldiers was killed, but...
Like mushrooms in fallen leaves, new words keep popping up overnight. Also, is there an English word that means “the in-laws of your son or daughter“? And what does it mean when someone says, “Well, that was odder than Dick’s...
