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...
Does turn up the A.C. mean make the room cooler or raise the thermostat and make it warmer? Kirsten from Tucson, Arizona, asks about the tricky little word up, because with heat, the machine’s effort and the temperature both rise, while with air...
Nathaniel, a vegetarian in Vermillion, South Dakota, encountered a tavern sandwich after moving from Kansas City and wondered why a word for a drinking place also names a sandwich. The sandwich is a loose-meat sandwich on a hamburger bun, familiar...
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...