Jeff from Iron Mountain, Michigan, is curious about the word happenstance. It’s a combination of the words happen and circumstance, and means by chance or by accident. Happenstance has been around since the 1850s. It outlasted a couple of competing...
Sophia, a 13-year-old from Naperville, Illinois, says she, her sister, and friends use search it up to mean look it up online, despite her mother’s objection that it should be look it up or just search it. The phrasing is real and especially common...
Sharon in Kaukauna, Wisconsin, says that when her father wanted his children to stop squirming, he used to say “You’re just like a fart in a mitten.” Versions of this term for something moving around a lot, feature a fart in a...
A Montreal, Canada, woman wonders why sometimes in old manuscripts the letter s looks like the letter f. A great resource on this topic is Andrew West’s blog Babelstone. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Why Did They...
A woman in Monkton, Vermont, says that when she and her 91-year-old mother return from a leisurely drive, her mother will proclaim, “That was a nice ride around the gool.” The phrase going around the gool appears in the Dictionary of American...
Why do we say someone has a cold when we say someone else has the flu, and another person has croup? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “A Cold, The Flu” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Anne. I’m calling...
