When you get to the stage of an online transaction where you’re asked to read the “Terms and Conditions,” do you actually read them? Or do you just check the box and move on? A London security firm once offered free use of a WiFi hotspot, provided...
If you watch British police procedurals, you’ll likely come across the term to grass someone, meaning “to inform on someone” or “to rat someone out.” It’s a bit of British rhyming slang that originated with the 19th-century phrase to shop on someone...
A listener named Kio from Los Angeles says she spent some time in England, and while her colleagues there claimed that her valley girl slang was rubbing off on them, she herself picked up plenty of English slang. This is a classic linguistic...
The new book Chaucer’s Tale by Paul Strohm describes the cramped, noisy, smelly place in which Chaucer wrote, which got us thinking about the particular environmental preferences we all have for getting serious writing done. This is part of a...
For language lovers, it’s like New Year’s, Fourth of July, and the Super Bowl all rolled into one: The brand-new online edition of the Dictionary of American Regional English. Martha and Grant explain what all the fuss is about. Plus, the debate...
Thanks to the fatberg-a 15-ton blob of fat and grease found in a London sewer-the -berg suffix lives on. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Fatberg” You know I should have mentioned this word on the air at the time it happened, but...
