What’s the best way for someone busy to learn lots of new words quickly for a test like the GRE? Looking up their origins can help. Or, record yourself reading the words and definitions and play them back while you’re doing other chores...
A lecturer in business law in St. Cloud, Minnesota, is astonished to discover his students are unfamiliar with throw the baby out with the bathwater, meaning “to accidentally get rid of the good while getting rid of the bad.” You can...
A woman who grew up in south central Minnesota grew up using the phrase too yet, which can have various meanings at the end of a sentence, usually with some negative sense. An article by Peter Veltman in American Speech suggests that the tag too yet...
Here’s a humorous take on how optimists differ from pessimists. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Opitmists vs. Pessimists” People keep sending us German jokes and I like this one. It translates as: The pessimist...
Our conversation about goofy German antiwitze prompts listeners to send in their own silly jokes. For example: What’s the difference between a duck? A pencil, because a duck has no sleeves! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
A defective car is a lemon because the fruit’s tartness long suggested sourness and disappointment. Austin from Owensboro, Kentucky, heard a friend use the word for a troublesome minivan. The negative sense of lemon appears by the 1860s for a...