Vanita from Dallas grew up in India calling the table container for salt and pepper a salt-and-pepper cellar, where many Americans would say salt-and-pepper shaker. A saltcellar (yes, usually spelled as one word with no space) is a vessel for salt...
The Stendhal syndrome is a term used to describe feeling overwhelmed by the beauty of a work of art. The name comes from the French writer Stendhal, who wrote about the dizzying sensation of seeing the art in Florence. It’s somewhat similar to...
Is there a word you keep having to look up in the dictionary, no matter how many times you’ve looked it up before? Maybe it’s time for a mnemonic device. And: a listener shares a letter from Kurt Vonnegut himself, with some reassuring...
There’s a new kind of hamburger menu that involves pixels, not pickles. It’s that little stack of horizontal lines in the corner of a webpage that you click to see more options. You might use a hamburger menu while webrooming–that...
Micah from Texas asks how to explain the difference between speak and talk to someone whose language uses one verb for both. Speak is often the more formal or one-way choice, as in Speaker of the House rather than Talker of the House, and it can...
You pick up what you think a glass of water and take a sip, but it turns out to be Sprite. What’s the word for that sensation when you’re expecting one thing and taste something else? Also, slang from college campuses, like ratchet and...
