It’s the Up Goer Five Challenge! Try to describe something complex using only the thousand most common words in English. It’s a useful mental exercise that’s harder than you might think. Also, if you want to make a room dark, you...
Did you ever wonder why we capitalize the pronoun “I,” but not any other pronoun? Also, the romantic story behind the term halcyon days, the origin of the phrase “like white on rice,” and the linguistic scuttlebutt on the...
Dude! We’re used to hearing the word “dude” applied to guys. But increasingly, young women use the word “dude” to address each other. Grant and Martha talk about linguistic research about the meaning and uses of...
Andy from San Diego wonders why his students object when he pronounces bury with the vowel of jury or fury, rather than like berry. The word comes from Old English byrgan, and its modern spelling and pronunciation reflect different regional paths in...
Hola, che! In this week’s episode, it’s a game about food names! (“What would you serve to a plumber?” “Leeks.”) We also discuss how to correct a new sweetheart’s grammar, “infracaninophile,”...
What’s happening linguistically when someone’s using the second-person singular possessive in a list of items? A Charlottesville, Virginia, caller began wondering that recently after hearing a wood-flooring salesperson say, “You got your...