The older sense of disappoint was briskly literal: in the 15th century, to disappoint someone could mean to remove them from an appointed office. A ruler could be disappointed, meaning stripped of rule, before the verb developed its familiar sense...
When an international team of scientists traveled to a research station in Antarctica for six months, the language they all shared was English. After six months together, their accents changed ever so slightly — a miniature version of how language...
Abishek in Gaffney, South Carolina, found himself using the word Tetrising to refer to trying to pack a lot of small items into a moving van, based on the video game Tetris, in which players try to make various combinations of squares all fit...
Gifts for book lovers: Martha recommends one for lovers of libraries and another for students of Spanish. Grant suggests some enchanting novels for young readers. When it comes to books, though, you can’t always judge them by their original titles...
A caller from East Tennessee swears that he’s heard ducks imitating the sounds of some nearby geese, and he’s probably right. Animals do indeed have the ability to mimic the sounds and behaviors of other species, but that doesn’t mean the animals...
If we ever settled on one universal language that everyone spoke, it would last about a minute before variants of slang started popping up. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Evolution of a Universal Language” You’re listening to...
