A listener in Washington, D.C., says that his parents taught him that when guests were over for dinner and a family member had specks of food on his face, the polite way to surreptitiously nudge him into wiping it off was to say, “Look...
You know that odd feeling when you’ve listened to a radio personality for years, but when you finally meet them, they look nothing like you’d imagined? Is there a word for that weird disconnect? Radiofreude, maybe? Hostbusters? This is...
“You look like the wreck of the Hesperus!” It means you look “disheveled, ragged, dirty, hung over, or otherwise less than your best.” It may sound like an odd phrase, but it made perfect sense to generations of...
Ever been met with a quizzical look and the question, “Do what?” The hosts discuss this dialectal equivalent of “How’s that?” or “Come again?” This is part of a complete episode.
For a closer look at the language of the twitterati, check out Erin McKean’s recent piece in the Boston Globe. Glossaries of Twitter-related terms can be found at Twittonary, and Twictionary. We didn’t say all the coinages were clever...
Does your handwriting look like chicken scratches, calligraphy, or maybe something in between? There’s a new book out about the history of penmanship. It’s called Script & Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting, by Kitty Burns...