Stories From The Onion In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from...
Has the age of email led to an outbreak of exclamation marks? Do women use them more than men? Also, is there a word for the odd feeling when you listen to a radio personality for years, then discover that they look nothing like your mental picture...
Martha reviews the new book, Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich, a memoir about setting out to learn a second language in mid-life. Rich spent a year in India to learn Hindi, and became so fascinated with the process that she went on to...
Here’s a riddle: “Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.” Think you know the answer? You’ll find it in this week’s episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other...
A woman who grew up in India says she was baffled when someone with aching feet complained, “My dogs are barking.” The answer may lie in a jocular rhyme. This is part of a complete episode.
Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words! This week's minicast, available only online, is about the Yiddish expression "hak mir nisht ken tshaynik." It's what you say to somebody who's annoying you with a lot of talk...