Courtney in Anchorage, Alaska, and her teenage son disagree: Should that collection of music be called a mixtape or a mixed tape? The former is far more common, and reflects that linguistic process known as lenition or “softening,” in...
Jodie in Norfolk, Virginia, reports that a new restaurant there serving New Haven-style pizza is called District Apizza, pronounced “ah-BEETS.” The word apizza is a remnant of the language of Italian immigrants who settled in...
Funny cat videos and cute online photos inspire equally adorable slang terms we use to talk about them. • Also, when a salamander is not a salamander, the story of an Italian term for a dish towel used halfway across the world, Bozo buttons...
Christopher in Rome, New York, grew up with mappine for a dish towel, as in a mappine drawer or a stack of mappines on the counter. The source is Italian dialect: mappina means cloth, towel, or rag in dialects spoken in places such as Piedmont and...
A listener in Williamsburg, Virginia, wants to know the correct pronunciation of the condiment known as Worcestershire sauce. The proper pronunciation involves what linguists call haplology, the loss of a syllable next to a similar-sounding one...
Jawn is a term common in Philadelphia and parts of New Jersey that refers to a thing, team, show, group, or pretty much any item. It’s a variant of joint, as in, a Spike Lee joint. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...