There’s nothing like a refreshing gulp of water, unless what you thought was water turns out to be vodka or Sprite. When the expectation of what you’ll taste gives way to surprise, shock, and offense, you’ve experienced what one...
Jeff from Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California, wants to know if he’s wrong to say, I’m going over Martha’s house, meaning “I’m going over to Martha’s house.” He’s always left out the word to from that...
If you’re an empty nester, you’ve probably wondered about a term for one’s grown offspring. Do you use the term adult children? How about kid-ults? Since the 1960’s, the term has also been used in the marketing and...
A fifth-year senior? That term is so 2007. These days, college students just refer to that extra year of school as taking a victory lap. Grant shares this and other examples of campus slang collected by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill...
Martha describes a funny linguistic misunderstanding she had while trying to read Harry Potter in Spanish. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Harry Potter en Español” Grant, we were talking earlier in the show about that...
Kara from Rockwood, Tennessee, asks about boogeyman after hearing in Port-au-Prince that the word came from a Haitian slave-revolt leader named Bokman. That story is unlikely, because related words are older than the revolt that led to Haiti’s...