There are word nerds, and then there’s the woman who set up a folding chair on sidewalks throughout the country, cheerfully dispensing tips about grammar. She recounts her adventures in a new book. And the story of the brilliant pioneer of computing...
Jane in Denver, Colorado, notes some people using the term an in front of a word beginning with a consonant, as if to emphasize that word by modifying it with the incorrect definite article. That may be what’s happening in this scene from the movie...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski serves up a Common Bonds puzzle, in which the object is to guess the common idea in each of three things. For example, what’s the one word that connects a grade on a report card, USDA inspected beef, and an incline? This is...
Ben Yagoda’s new book Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English, based on his blog Not One-Off Britishisms, which features words and phrases that are originally British but are being used more and more in the States, including cushy...
When you’re talking about the location of an inanimate object, is it okay to say that it lives there, as in The peanut butter lives in that cabinet or The flashlight lives on that shelf? Strictly speaking, of course, that object isn’t alive, but...
U.S. President Thomas Jefferson has been credited with the first use of belittled in print. The word appears in his 1785 Notes on the State of Virginia. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Belittled and Jefferson” As far as we know...