The owner of a Berlin, Maryland, produce stand wants to know: When a customer is buying four ears of corn, should they say I have four corn or I have four ears of corn? Corn is a mass noun that can also be counted as a plural, just as we might say I...
Jonah, a music teacher, in Baltimore, Maryland, shares a funny story about a student who misunderstood his question about the capital of his home state. That left Jonah wondering about the difference between the words capital and capitol. The former...
Stacy in Eureka, California, wonders: what’s the proper way to pronounce the word bury? Should it rhyme with jury or cherry? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Pronouncing Bury” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Good morning, Martha...
Rachel, who moved from Nebraska to attend school in College Park, Maryland, says her friends were surprised when she referred to the driver of an ice cream truck as the ding ding man. Indeed, this term seems to now be limited largely to Omaha...
In Maryland and Virginia, bluebird weather is a brief period of warm weather in autumn. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Bluebird Weather” Grant, have you ever heard the term bluebird weather? No, but I know about the bluebird of...
A listener in Abilene, Texas, says that his Maryland relatives always referred to asparagus as spagglers, so he was shocked when he got to college and realized no one else knew what he was talking about. This vegetable goes by lots of other names...
