A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...
A caller from San Antonio, Texas, remembers a song her father, a World War II vet, used to sing: “Around the corner and under a tree / A sergeant major proposed to me / Who would marry you? I would like to know / For every time I look at your...
We all misspeak from time to time, but how about when we mangle words on purpose? Do you ever say fambly instead of family, perazackly for exactly, or coinkydink for coincidence? When Grant recently wrote a newspaper column about saying things wrong...
Welcome to the A Way with Words newsletter, where "language" is our middle name. "Dangerous" was taken. This weekend we told you what a "trailer queen" and a "soup spitter" are, and we took a punny quiz about...
Hello, everybody, it’s another newsletter from A Way with Words. Over the weekend, our latest episode concentrated on the ever-popular topic of words people mispronounce on purpose, the pronunciation of “beaux arts,” and the...
Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words! This newsletter was originally supposed to go out on Monday, May 12th, but our service provider had a snafu and the messages disappeared into the ether. There are a lot of creatures on planets...