At Milwaukee’s Mitchell International Airport, a post-security sign reading “RECOMBOBULATION AREA” plays on discombobulate, meaning to confuse or throw into disorder. Rissa from Madison wondered where discombobulate came from after seeing it while...
You call the repairman to fix a balky garage door, but when he gets there, it inexplicably works. You summon a plumber, only to find that when he arrives, your toilet’s no longer leaking, and you’re out $150. Or you discover that...
In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?
You’ve just read a terrific paperback novel. Would you feel any differently about it if you’d the same words on the glowing screen of an electronic book? Martha and Grant discuss the social and psychological implications of books that...
throw a Porsche at someone v. phr.— «An incident like this brings home the sheer scale of military spending. In Afghanistan, where Javelin heat-seeking missiles are sometimes launched against Taliban personnel, our soldiers call it, with...
An American cartographer for the United Nations reports that he and his British wife disagree over whether lollygolly is a real word that means “to dawdle.” Martha and Grant show the mapmaker where to draw the line. This is part of a...
