The word sacrilegious, describing something that violates the sacred, is tricky to spell. It’s easy to assume that it contains the word religious, but it doesn’t. Sacrilegious derives from sacrilegus, a Latin word that means a stealer of sacred...
Try this tricky puzzle: Take the words new door and rearrange their letters into one word. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “New Door Word Puzzle” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m...
The word climb has been sneaking by with that silent b for a while. But speakers of Old English pronounced the b in its predecessor, climban. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Words With Silent B” Hello, you have A Way with Words...
There’s no hard-set rule about whether to capitalize the phrase To Whom It May Concern, though it may also be worth figuring out who you’re addressing, and writing to them instead. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Capitalization in...
Allen from San Diego wonders whether his business title should be strategic advisor or strategic adviser, especially because his spell-checker prefers -er. Both spellings are acceptable, but newer corpus evidence shows advisor with -or has become...
Some office workers say their word processor’s spellchecker always flags the words overnighted and overnighting. Are those words acceptable in a business environment? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Overnighted” Hello, you have A...