Mav in Madison, Wisconsin, has heard content creators on platforms like YouTube and Twitch address their viewers collectively with the word chat, as in Chat, is this real? and Do you see this, chat? She’s heard some people describe chat used in this...
Silas, a 10th-grader in Madison, Wisconsin, is working on his own conlang, or constructed language. He wonders how and why the French uvular R sound, as in the French word rouge, came about, as opposed to the rolled Spanish R in carro. As Trask’s...
Sunny-side up eggs sometime go by the name looking at you eggs, an apparent reference to how the yolk in the middle of the egg white makes them resemble eyes. A similar idea appears in the German name, which translates as “mirror egg,” and in...
To go at something bald-headed means “to rush at something head-on.” The same idea informs the phrase to “I’m going to pinch you bald-headed,” which an exasperated parent might say to a misbehaving child. The more common version is “snatch you bald...
A listener from Madison, Wisconsin, has an issue with the word issue. She doesn’t like it being used as a synonym for problem. But the American Heritage Usage Panel has come around to accepting the new use of issue, so if that’s a problem, take...
“Whistling girls and cackling hens always come to some bad end,” said people in the olden days regarding transgressive women. A variation on this saying pops up in a 1911 book called Folk-Lore of Women by one Reverend Thomas Thiselton-Dyer. This is...
