What’s the linguistic connection between pretend and pretension or pretentious? They all go back the Latin praetendere, meaning to put something forward. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “How Do “Pretend” and...
Good poetry is even better when you read it aloud. For his anthology, Essential Pleasures: A New Anthology of Poems to Read Aloud former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky selected works with just that in mind. Martha and Grant discuss a poem from the...
“Don’t be frontin’!” Naomi, a college student in Denton, Texas, asks about fronting, slang for putting on a false front, bluffing, or pretending to be something you’re not. The verb traces back to 1800s pickpocket slang, where a “front” distracted...