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...
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.
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...
A caller named Todd says that when people meet him for the first time, they sometimes call him Scott, even if he’s wearing a nametag with his real name on it. It’s happened too many times to be a coincidence, he says, and wonders if...
“You little snickelfritz!” An Indiana man says his mother used to call him that when she meant “You little rascal!” Although the term’s meaning has changed over time, its original meaning was a bit naughty. This is part...
