Martha shares a story about finding a monarch caterpillar and watching its metamorphosis in its gold-dotted chrysalis (from the Greek chrysos, “gold” as in the word chrysanthemum, meaning “golden flower”), to the...
A man from Fort Smith, Arkansas, says his Canadian wife is baffled by his pronouncing the word cement as CEE-ment. Stressing the first syllable of such words as police, insurance, umbrella, and vehicle is an occasional feature of Southerners’...
Isaac from Portland, Oregon, asks whether the workplace verb for tossing ideas around is spitball or spiffball. The standard form is spitball, from the schoolroom trick of wadding up paper, moistening it with saliva, and launching it at a wall or...