Rolling in the deep in Adele’s song builds on the slang expression roll deep, meaning to have loyal friends around you, people who have your back. In a Rolling Stone interview from February 2011, Adele traced the phrase to British slang, and the...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game of rhyming headlines based on the 1937 Variety issue, “Sticks Nix Hick Pix,” claiming that rural folks avoid movies about rural folks. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Rhyming Headlines Quiz”...
Greetings, word watchers! In this week's episode, we talk about "making money hand over fist," "don't take any wooden nickels," "peter out," "thrice-happy pair," colorful idioms from around the world...
What’s in a pet’s name? Martha and Grant swap stories about how they came up with names for their dogs. Also this week: Have you ever been called a stump-jumper? How about a snicklefritz? And what’s the last word in the dictionary? Depending on...
Martha offers excellent writing advice from the former editor of People magazine, Landon Y. Jones. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Writing Advice from an Editor” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett. And I’m...
A reader of The Atlantic magazine is surprised to find that they’re not capitalizing letters in headlines the way they used to. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Headline Capitalization” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, is this...