Bruce in Indianapolis heard older Indiana farm folks use work-brickle for someone who’s industrious, or, in the negative, not much of a worker. The expression goes back to dialects of the British Isles and survives in U.S. pockets with shifting...
It’s one of the biggest grammatical bugaboos of all, the one that bedevils even the most earnest English students: Is it lie or lay? Martha shares a trick for remembering the difference. See below for her clip-and-save chart of these verbs. Print it...
Time for another linguistic mystery. Where would you be if you decided to go twacking around duckish, and then you came home and wrote about it in a scribbler?
Consuegro is the Spanish word Kathy from Imperial Beach misses from English when she wants to talk about the parents of her child’s spouse. English has the broad term in-laws, but no common, tidy word for that particular relationship between the two...
“It’s raining, it’s pouring.” But what exactly is the “it” that’s doing all that raining and pouring? This question from a caller prompts Grant to explain what linguists mean when they talk about the weather it. Hint: It depends on what the meaning...
You’ve just read a terrific paperback novel. Would you feel any differently about it if you’d the same words on the glowing screen of an electronic book? Martha and Grant discuss the social and psychological implications of books that run on...