Martha Barnette gets a call from Martha Barnett, her Canadian tocaya who’s missing an “e” at the end of her last name. On the Global News website, you can see that the name Martha, perhaps now an anomaly in Canada, peaked in...
There should be a word for the kind of friend you can go without seeing for years, then reconnect with as though no time has gone by. Martha calls those her “Anyway” friends, because they just pick right up with...
Alight and come in is an old-fashioned, hospitable phrase recalling a time when a visitor who’s ridden a long way might be invited to hop off his horse and step inside for a meal. Variations include alight and look at your saddle and alight...
Martha proposes the word miesta, a sort of combination of “me-time” and a “siesta.” This is part of a complete episode.
If someone’s a pound of pennies, it means they’re a valuable asset and a pain in the butt, all at the same time. Grant and Martha are stumped on the origin of this one, though it is true that a pound of pennies comes out to about $1.46...
Whom you gonna call about discrepancies regarding who and whom? Grant and Martha, that’s who. Although whom to contact is a correct use of whom, it’s fast becoming obsolete, with growing numbers of people viewing it as elitist, effete...