Hockey mom? Staycation? Recessionista? What’s your choice for Word of the Year 2008? Also, what expression do you use to describe when it’s raining but the sun is still shining?
Do English-speaking foreigners understand you better if you speak English with a foreign accent? A Californian says that on a recent visit to Armenia, he discovered the locals had an easier time if he spoke English with an Armenian accent. Is this...
drugs ‘n’ thugs n.— «Rand Beers, a Foreign Service officer who handled intelligence, counterterrorism and peacekeeping issues on the National Security Council and was later assistant secretary of state for International...
green card soldier n.— «There are tens of thousands of foreign-born members in the U.S. armed forces. Many have been naturalized, but more than 20,000 are not U.S. citizens. “Green card soldiers,” they are often called, and...
A listener calls from in Buenos Aires, Argentina, to say that in her native Spanish, she can use several different words for love to denote a whole range of feelings, depending on how close she is to the other person. She’s frustrated that...
NOC n.— «Barnes is a neophyte agent, an ex-doctoral candidate in Ottoman history, trained as a case officer under nonofficial cover, “known in the secret language of the club as NOC. As in: knock on wood.” Naive and...
