Jane in Billings, Montana, says her daughter is a veterinary student who pronounces the word experiment as ecks-PEER-a-ment rather than ex-PARE-a-ment. By their early teens, children tend to get their language from peers, rather than their parents...
New research published in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology suggests that people who speak more than one languagetend to be less superstitious if they’re reading or thinking in a different language. This is part of a complete episode...
A former sociology professor shares a peeve about the language of political pundits: He’s irked when they say a candidate wants to replicate or duplicate his win. The professor explains why he thinks they should eschew those words and instead opt...
ambulance-chasing n.— «As a result, theorists haven’t been able to resist interpreting these statistically suspect results. It’s an activity that Neil Turok of Princeton University (himself a theorist) describes as “ambulance chasing—running after...
curebie n.— «What causes most of the friction between autistic people and the neurotypical folks they sometimes refer to as “curebies,” is the belief that the non-medical, non-injurious aspects of autism, such as arm flapping, toe-walking...
cybridization n.— «An experimental method called cybridization transfers a gene for sterility into seedy varieties, rendering them seedless more efficiently than the shotgun approach used in irradiation.» —“Seedless Fruits Make Others Needless” by...
