Whom you gonna call about discrepancies regarding who and whom? Grant and Martha, that’s who. Although whom to contact is a correct use of whom, it’s fast becoming obsolete, with growing numbers of people viewing it as elitist, effete...
When award winners say I’m humbled, Ann from Burlington, Vermont, hears a mismatch: winning seems like a moment to feel honored, not brought low. The phrase can sound disingenuous if it calls attention to the prize, but it can also be apt when the...
In Indiana, a dish-to-pass supper is another term for a pot-luck supper or a covered-dish supper. A related regional label is the pitch-in supper, where everyone contributes a dish. Checking Wikipedia’s potluck article for more synonyms turned up...
What’s the best way to win at scissors, paper, rock? Grant delves into the game’s various monikers, its roots going back centuries in Europe and Asia, and the role it plays among children learning about fairness. Studies have even been...
Grant has compiled his ninth annual words-of-the-year piece for The New York Times Sunday Review section. Among these gems is the verb doxing, as in documenting someone’s life and share it on the web. What were your picks for the words of 2012...
Because Grant still can’t get enough schoolyard rhymes, he shares one this week that goes: Three six nine / the goose drank wine / the monkey chewed tobacco on the streetcar line. Are you a lifer when it comes to children’s rhymes? This...