Like many English words, tip — as in, the gratuity you leave to the waiter or the bellhop — doesn’t originate with an acronym such as To Insure Promptness. This type of tip goes back to the mid-18th century, when thieves would tip, or tap...
A recent study found that some names crop up more frequently than others in certain professions. The name William is especially common among attorneys–and graphic designers include a higher-than-average number of Jessicas. Plus, picturesque...
A recent article in The New Yorker magazine about the late writer David Foster Wallace has Martha musing about Wallace’s stem-winding sentences, and the word stem-winder.
Step right up! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." This week we talked about unusual ways foreigners learn English, "play golf" vs. "go golfing," lie vs. lay, similes, "yo!," "neck of the...
Martha explains how experiments with dead frogs and live wires led to the invention of the battery, and inspired a couple of familiar English words.
hooter hider n.—Gloss: a cloth or short apron that gives a mother modesty when nursing a child. «This invention is called the Hooter Hider, for women who want to breast feed in public. Buggy and I are going into business for ourselves...