Springtime is the right time to feel twitterpated—you know, you’re smitten beyond a crush. Speaking of relationships, are dog owners really owners, or should they call themselves something else, like guardian or human? And if you’re up...
Why do spelling bees use such strange words — often foreign words that almost nobody uses? Like cymotrichous, stromuhr, Laodicean, guerdon, serrefine, and Ursprache? We answered that question in last week’s episode — it’s what happens...
“Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” Thank you to our listeners for this and other modern proverbs. This is part of a complete episode.
Martha has an example of a linguistic false friend: In Latvian, the word vista means “chicken.” This is part of a complete episode.
The word rubric derives from a Latin word for “red.” Originally, it referred to red letters used as section headings in religious texts and the like. Rubric has since become a term used in modern educational jargon, as in grading rubric...
In an earlier episode, we discussed linguistic false friends, those words in foreign languages that look like familiar English words, but mean something quite different. Martha reads an email response from a listener who learned the hard way that in...