In response to our discussion about pangrams, a listener in Bishop, California, offers a 59-letter one: Funk revival jazz band played exciting three-quarter tempo waltzes. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Pangram Jazz...
Some of the music you hear on this show is the work of Sure Fire Soul Ensemble, a San Diego-based Afro-funk and soul-jazz band. Their keyboard player is Tim Felten, who, as it happens, is also the editor and engineer for A Way with Words. He selects...
The SAT is changing things up, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Just because words like membranous are no longer in the verbal section doesn’t mean kids aren’t learning important vocabulary. And speaking of useful terms...
Leanne in Richmond, Virginia, heard sitting high and looking low in a Social Security office, where it seemed to describe an employee acting superior to people waiting for help. The expression is used mostly in African American contexts and is...
Where’d we get the expression “You bet your sweet bippy!”? It’s from Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, a zany television show from the late 1960s. The word bippy, by the way, means “butt.” The phrase “You bet your sweet bippy” is a linguistic...
skweee n.— «I had been making skweee for a while and everything was sort of on and popping and bubbling, like it still feels, and Harmönia was compiling their second 12 inch release. So I decided to make a track dedicated to this “brand...