Toshi, a 27-year-old in Dallas, Texas, wonders about differences in the way she and her parents use punctuation in text messages. When older adults send her texts using ellipses, Toshi gets a queasy feeling that it’s because they’re...
Books that make great gifts for language-lovers, the difference between a nerd and a geek, and talk about a new term, poutrage, and what do you call the crust in the corners of your eyes after a night’s sleep?
What’s the difference between a geek and a nerd? An Ohio professor of popular culture wants to talk about it. Here’s the a MetaFilter thread and a Venn diagram about the differences. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Hello, friends — Good news! Our mini-podcast with Will Shortz is now on the “A Way with Words” site. Will created this quiz about anagrams and slang just for AWWW listeners. Give it a try: On to this week’s show: spoonerisms...
A man in Huntington Beach, California, ponders his teenager’s frequent use of the words fail and epic fail. Grant explains what this has to do with semantic bleaching, and discusses some funny fails on failblog.org. This is part of a complete...
The mother of eight-year-old twins wonders why one of her girls habitually adds “dun-dun-DUN!” to sentences in everyday conversation. The hosts suspect it’s related to the audio element known as a “sting” in television...