What’s the best way for someone busy to learn lots of new words quickly for a test like the GRE? Looking up their origins can help. Or, record yourself reading the words and definitions and play them back while you’re doing other chores...
This week on A Way with Words: Restaurant jargon, military slang, and modern Greek turns of phrase. • Some restaurants now advertise that they sell “clean” sandwiches. But that doesn’t mean they’re condiment-free or the...
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...
Washing Machine Charlie n.— «By the time he was 19, McNerney was the platoon sergeant of a mortar unit assigned to HQ Company in the jungles of Saipan, fighting Japanese soldiers and dodging Japanese bombs. One day, in early July 1944...
waz adj.— «The team name Wazwagamafs comes from waz (Marine lingo for fantastic) and “wagamafs, (wives and girlfriends and mums and families/friends).» —“Women’s muddy hell to help brave troops” by Caroline...
lob bomb n.— «The military refers to it as an IRAM. I think it’s “improvised rocket-assisted mortar” or something—some ridiculous term like that. But we refer to it as a “lob bomb,” because they use a truck and a ramp-type device to just...