She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are seashells I’m sure, so if she sells seashells on the seashore, then I’m sure she sells seashore shells. Some claim that this tongue twister is about the early life of 19th...
Mary Gordon in Austin, Texas, shares a delightful story about her elderly father and a handful of vegetables, which raises the question: what’s the plural of squash? Squashes? Or squash? This is part of a complete episode.
Martha recommends Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, a deeply personal, exuberant account of falling in love with both ancient and modern Greek by Mary Norris, former copy editor for The New Yorker. Norris shares several intriguing modern...
Hey, podcast listener! Martha here with a special minicast of A Way with Words. Today I want to tell you a story — and make a request for you to support A Way with Words. The story is about a guy named Luigi. He was born in 1737 in Bologna, Italy...
Mary in Tulsa, Oklahoma, says that growing up, she and the kids in her neighborhood used the the verb pump to refer to giving someone a lift on a bicycle. This caused a bit of confusion when she went away to college and puzzled fellow students with...
When Mary from Hanover, New Hampshire, was vacationing in Alaska, she picked up a term from the locals: sucker hole. It refers to a patch of sun peeking through the clouds, which leads tourists to assume that the weather is going to clear up. The...