Martha and Grant share a couple of favorite online sources for reading about language: Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words newsletter and Arnold Zwicky’s blog. Be sure to check out Zwicky’s post, “Dialect dangerous to...
Grand Bargain n.— «The harder part will be trying to follow that up by creating what is coming to be known in Obama circles as a Grand Bargain: getting everyone to agree to clean up the nation’s budget mess in a really big way, one that...
There’s nothing like an oddly phrased headline to brighten your day. How about “Actor Sent to Jail for Not Finishing Sentence”? Or “Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped”? Same for signs that make you do a double take, like...
Martha talks about a favorite Latin-based word: pandiculation. It’s a term that means “the stretching that accompanies yawning.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Pandiculation” So, do you know what...
The death of Martha’s favorite cat Typo prompts her to reminisce about him, and about one of her favorite ailurophilic words, chatoyant.
The British publishers of the Collins dictionary have announced 24 words on their endangered species list. They’re words like “vilipend,” which means “to treat with contempt,” and “nitid,” that’s n-i-t...