A North Carolina man says he was surprised as a child when he did a chore for his grandmother, and the Yankee dime she promised him turned out to be a peck on the cheek. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Paid with a Yankee Dime”...
Grant argues that new commercial categories of literature, which include poop fiction, chick lit, K-mart realism, and tart noir resemble the kind of fracturing that already occurred in the music world. Here’s the blog entry that got him started...
In an earlier episode, a caller named Todd said that people are forever calling him Scott. He wondered if there was some linguistic reason that people so often confused these names. Grant does a follow-up on why people sometimes mix up names. This...
A San Francisco man confesses he routinely pronounces the word both as “bolth.” Grant gives him the results of an informal online survey that shows the caller he’s not alone—some 10 percent of respondents said they do the same thing. This is part of...
A recent fire in Grant’s apartment building has him pondering the role played by fire in English idioms. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Language of Fires” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant...
A listener in Washington, D.C., says that his parents taught him that when guests were over for dinner and a family member had specks of food on his face, the polite way to surreptitiously nudge him into wiping it off was to say, “Look! There’s a...