Lynne from Grapevine, Texas, remembers that her parents sometimes referred to her clothing as a get-up, as in That’s quite a get-up, or Where did you get that get-up? The implication was that her outfit was poorly conceived and she ought to...
Books for sale, books for free, and wisdom passed down through the ages. Libraries aren’t just repositories for books — they’re often a great place to find gently used volumes for sale. Or you can always visit a “little free...
Those of us in the United States and Britain may be separated by a common language, but we’re also separated when it comes to how we indicate numbers. A Numberphile video featuring linguist Lynne Murphy explains this in more depth. This is...
There have been three brand-new episodes broadcast recently. Did you catch them? • Three weeks ago, it was Shank of the Evening, in which we talked about sports nicknames, flounder vs. founder, Laundromats vs. washaterias, Black Dutch...
In the U.K., they don’t count seconds as “one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi,” because, well, they have no Mississippi. Instead, they say “one-elephant, two-elephant.” Lynne Murphy, author of the blog Separated by a...
mini-dorm n.— «Victoria Gruber, a plaintiff and president of the Student Government Association at the University of Maryland, pointed out that the council’s “mini-dorm” law restricting the number of students in a rented...