Two close friends from Richmond, Kentucky, call to share their hilarious dispute about how to correctly describe the one of them who’s always to blame for something. Is she the fault default or the default fault? This is part of a complete episode...
A discussion on the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange about things that can still be useful even if they longer function properly, such as escalators and moving sidewalks, included several intriguing expressions involving partial failure...
Why are some American place names pronounced differently than the famous place they were named after? Why is Cairo, Ill., pronounced “KAY-roh”? Why do Midwesterners pronounce Versailles as “Ver-SALES” and the New Madrid Fault as “New MAD-rid”? Grant...
simming n.—Gloss: From “simulating.” «It took a room full of networked computers called a “render farm” to do in about 14 months what would have taken a single machine 16 years: churn out digital scenes precisely modeled after real life, Mr...
quench n.— «During a power test, the very last before collisions could start in the machine (to the annoyance of engineers), a fault led to a warming of the busbar. As superconductivity was lost, the temperature soared in a “quench.” The machine is...
watershed n.— «Jargon watch: when people talk about “the watershed,” they mean the difference between 8 pm and earlier, when kids might be watching, and 9 pm, when if kids are still up, it’s their parents’ fault. Our show is probably a post...
