The British slang adjective squiffy first appeared in the 19th century and means drunk. A golden gut signals dependable business acumen, the kind of intuition that data can override. At Google, one story goes, 41 shades of blue were tested to see...
Regional grammar can be just as rich and diverse as regional vocabulary. The Yale Grammatical Diversity Project maps grammatical features that vary across American English, using research and survey data to show where they cluster. Examples include...
Our Quiz Guy Greg Pliska has a game based on Google searches, or at least what Google thinks you’re searching. For example, what do Elmo, pink, and plant all have in common? Google suggests them, in that order, after you’ve entered the...
We all know that the color pink is for boys and the color blue is for girls — at least, that’s how it was 100 years ago. Grant and Martha share the surprising history behind the colors we associate with gender. Plus, we go rollin’ in our...
Remember those children’s classics, the Velveteen Rabbi and The Little Price? The Twitterverse is abound with these books with a letter missing. And it turns out there’s some pimping going on in our hospitals, but it’s not what...
Looking for something that curls your hair, cleans your teeth, and makes childbirth a pleasure? A listener’s mother used that saying in reference to every miracle potion from WD-40 to vinegar. Grant explains that the first known version of...