The so-called “lifestyle influencer accent” you hear in videos on TikTok and YouTube, where someone speaks with rising tones at the end of sentences and phrases, suggesting that they’re about to say something important, is a form of what linguists...
Sean in New York City is curious about the expression the business end, as in the business end of a gun. It’s simply “the end of an object that fulfills its function or purpose,” such as the business end of a shovel, the business end of a nail, the...
Grant shares a word he’s been encountering at conferences: discussant. A discussant is someone who, after a series of papers are presented, takes the microphone to summarize the information given and offer opinions on the matter. This is part of a...
voice writing n.— «In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The “writer”—really a speaker—repeats testimony into a...
mult box n.— «To allow the cameras to record high-quality audio, The Brookings Institute borrowed what’s known as a “mult box” from the Hilton hotel on Embassy Row. The mult box connects to the podium microphone and has two dozen inputs; it’s easy...
There's a new online-only episode of "A Way with Words" today: a half-hour "New Word Open Mic" from the 2007 Dictionary Society of North America conference, during which all comers were invited to step up to the microphone...
