She's a pickin' and he's a grinnin'--it's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." Salut! Oh, hey, sure, it was a rerun this past weekend. A good one, though, with a brand-new word quiz to boot. It has...
You’ve heard people describe something momentous as “a watershed moment in history.” What is a watershed, exactly? Besides an Indigo Girls’ song, that is. This is part of a complete episode.
Why do aviators say roger to indicate they’ve received a message? A pilot phones the show about that, wilco, and similar language. This is part of a complete episode.
“Yo!” Why did people ever start using the word yo! to get someone’s attention? Grant explains that in English there’s mo’ than one yo. This is part of a complete episode.
What does dog hair have to do with hangover cures? Also, where’d we ever get a word like “dude”? And what’s the word for when unexpected objects form a recognizable image, like a cloud that looks like a bunny, or the image of Elvis...
Good news if you’ve wondered about a word for recognizable images composed of random visual stimuli—that image of Elvis in your grilled-cheese sandwich, for example. It’s pareidolia. This is part of a complete episode.