The guy who may be the nation’s foremost garage sale expert called us from Crescent City, California, with a question that’s vital for anyone writing or thinking about garage sales: Do the verbs garage-saling or yard-saling refer to the person...
Creative communication in a noisy world! Writing a clever 140-character tweet isn’t easy. But you know what’s even more impressive? Working all 26 letters of the alphabet into just one sentence! The term for that type of sentence is pangram...
A wine expert with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a minor in French wonders about the origin of the term sommelier. It shares a root with sumpter, meaning “pack animal.” Sommelier used to refer generally to the person in charge of the...
Today’s most popular dog names are Max and Bella. In the Middle Ages, though, dogs would answer to names like Amiable. Or Nosewise. Or even … Clench. ? Is the term redneck derogatory? Some folks proudly claim that name. They say it’s high time they...
Hellooooo, nurse! We have two recent brand-new episodes to share, plus some language news, along with a bit about what’s going on with us. First, on the show this past weekend we talked about eponyms, jo-jo potatoes, dog breed mashups, the...
We have collective nouns for animals, like “a gaggle of geese,” “a pride of lions,” and “an exaltation of larks.” So why not collective nouns for plants? How about a “greasing of palms,” or a “pursing of tulips”? Also, the difference between further...