Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle was inspired by the Greek letter chi. All of the answers contain the letters C-H-I. For example, if you see a man standing idly by while his wife struggles with grocery bags, you might surmise that something’s dead...
Quinn from Excelsior, Minnesota, is five years old — well, five and three-quarters, as she points out. She wonders why the letter Q is so often followed by U. In Old English, the alphabet didn’t include the letter Q. The word quick, for example, was...
Looking for a word that denotes being really excited for someone, but also a little sad? One option is bittersweet, but if you’d like a term that’s not quite so overused, yayboo is taking hold online. The Modern Greek word charmolype translates as...
Americans pronounce the letter Z like “zee,” while those in other English-speaking countries say “zed.” That’s because Noah Webster proposed lots of Americanized pronunciations and this is one of the few that stuck. David Sacks’ book Letter Perfect...
Jeff from Columbus, Indiana, asks about his father’s use of the expression “not one iota” to mean “not one bit.” An iota is the smallest letter in the Greek alphabet, and ancient Greek speakers used the word for something exceedingly tiny. The...
In Britain, Canada, and some other English-speaking countries, the last letter of the alphabet is not zee, but zed. A caller who grew up in Guyana wonders why. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Zed, Not Z” Hello, you have A Way with...