This week’s “Slang This!” contestant tries to decipher the slang phrases dance at two weddings and put the big pot in the little pot. She also shares her own favorite slang terms for crumb crusher, rug rat and ankle biter. By the...
In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from Language Programs.” By...
A newspaper headline about a faltering legislative proposal prompts a caller to ask: Should they have written floundering or foundering? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “From Flopping Fish to Sinking Ships: Floundering and...
clip job n.— «Horwitt writes that he spent five years interviewing Feingold, his family and friends. He also read a lot of local and national newspapers, judging by the footnotes. But he drew on few other sources, and the result is...
views paper n.— «The metaphor for this genre of modern journalism is, if you don’t mind me saying so, the Independent newspaper. Let me say at the outset that the Independent is a well edited lively paper and absolutely entitled to print...
gardentoolism n.— «Call a spade a spade, rather than attacking it as a manifestation of the dangerous ideology of gardentoolism.» —“Comment is free: The demagogic cliches of right and left can only make things worse” by...