Say you have a particularly rambunctious child. Okay, a little hellion. Is it proper to describe the little devil as a holy terror? Or might it be more correct and more logical to call him an unholy terror? A Los Angeles caller thinks it’s the...
The German word über has found a place in American English. A New Jersey man says he and his colleagues find it to be more versatile than a Swiss Army knife, as in, “He is uber in the middle of that situation,” “That was an uber...
Why do we say political campaigns that are in a dead heat? Why dead and why heat? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dead Heat” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hello. Hi, who’s this? Amy Charpentier from Quincy...
A Kentucky listener and her husband wonder about the proper meaning of the word everloving. Sometimes they hear it used to express frustration, as in, “Why won’t he pass the everloving basketball?”, but other times they hear it...
honking adj. very large; whopping; as an intensifier or in an adverbial role, very. Editorial Note: It is unclear in the 1974 citation whether the cars had honking horns or were seen as large compared to the European automobiles. (source: Double...
–tacular suffix in the forming of nouns, ‘an exciting or extravagant event’ associated with the root; in the forming of adjectives, an intensifier of the root, ‘a lot, great, large, extravagant, excessive.’ Editorial Note: Terms created with...