The word pretty, used to modify an adjective, as in pretty good or pretty bad, has strayed far from its etymological roots, which originally had to do with being “cunning” or “crafty.” This is part of a complete episode...
A caller with a 25-year-old parrot wonders: How much language do birds really understand? Plus, Knock-knock. Who’s there? Boo. Well… you can guess the rest. But there was a time when these goofy jokes were a brand-new craze sweeping the nation...
Diamond in the rough usually points to unrealized promise, not simply a bright spot among lesser company. Molly in Allen, Texas, encountered a lively split over that distinction, but the older image comes from the diamond trade: a rough diamond has...
Alex in Montreal wonders why his Canadian Armed Forces unit uses the British-style pronunciation lef-TEN-ant for lieutenant, while Americans usually say loo-TEN-ant. Both pronunciations trace to French before the word entered English, with the f...
If you’re serious about writing a memoir, what topics should you include, and what can you leave out? And how honest can you really be about the other people in your life? Some of America’s leading memoirists wrote things they lived to...
The bleachers in a baseball stadium are the unshaded benches that get bleached by the sun. The word stands, on the other hand, derives a 17th-century use of stand meaning a place for spectators, who either sat or stood, and is an etymological...