William Shakespeare’s early schooling was less an English class than a Latin training ground for rhetoric, imitation, and argument. In How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, Scott Newstok explains that Stratford grammar...
How did the word gay go from meaning lighthearted to homosexual? Also, why are elementary schools sometimes called grammar schools? Plus, imeldific, gone pecan, random Scrabble words, and the difference between borrow and lend. And the etiquette of...
[Grover voice:] Hello, everybodeee! We’ve been cranking out brand-new episodes, so if you’re behind, there are treats in store: • In last week’s episode, “Gone Pecan,” we explained how how gay got that way, we laid out the logic behind confusion...
Megan from East Hampton, New York, asks why an elementary school is sometimes called a grammar school when pupils study far more than grammar. The name reaches back to medieval church and monastery schools, or scolae grammaticales, where Latin...

