An Alabama high-school teacher observes that one of his fellow teachers tends to write words that should be plural as singular, such as “I graded all 50 test” instead of “I graded all 50 tests.” The reason for this locution...
Twittering, tweeting, twirting—it’s rare to see a whole new body of language appear right before your eyes. But that’s what’s happening with Twitter. We discuss the snappy new shorthand of the twitterati. Also, why do people feel...
Memorial Day good wishes to you and the remembered. Here's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." Did you miss us? There was no newsletter last week, so now we have two brand-spanking-new episodes to share. This past...
Boom! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." Get an earful of our conversation from this past week's show: pandiculation, doorknobbing, cotton-picking, enormity, on the QT, and more: Martha's got a foodie treat...
When something’s crooked, some people describe it as catawampus, cattywampus, or kittywampus. A caller wonders about the historical roots of all these words. Anything to do with felines? This is part of a complete episode.
tromboning n.— «A prime example is the historical monopolisation of the telecoms sector by Telkom. In order to deliver cheaper calls we have been forced to resort to a method called tromboning. Here, we actually re-route calls to...