Some college students are using the word loyalty as a synonym for monogamy. Are the meanings of these words now shifting? Plus, a biologist discovers a new species of bat, then names it after a poet he admires. Also, warm memories of how a childhood...
High school students in Alabama share some favorite slang terms. If someone tells you to touch grass, they’re telling you to get a reality check — but the last thing you’d actually want to touch is dog water! Also, the history of the...
Erin grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, but when she moved to New York City, she found that people often told her she pronounces Erin as if it’s spelled like the masculine name Aaron. Has Erin been pronouncing her own name wrong all these years...
Larry from Cameron, South Carolina, says a friend who grew up on Johns Island, South Carolina, was warned since she was a small child to stay out of the woods, lest she be seized by a scary beast known as the guyascutus. At least as far back as the...
A caller wonders if she’s being hypersensitive about the way her boss addresses her in emails. Can the use of an employee’s first name ever reflect a power differential? And: a community choir director wants a term for “the act of...
Listeners continue to invent names of Greek gods by pronouncing familiar words with the accent on the wrong syllable. There’s Mediocrities, god of “things that are just pretty much okay”; Lotteries, “the god of random...