Michelle in Thorne Bay, Alaska, uses nervous Nellie for herself on snowy roads and wonders who Nellie was. The expression, meaning a timid or overly cautious person, shows up in the early 1920s and was popularized in political talk about Frank B...
What’s an end-of-the-year episode without Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s limericks about words in the news? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Year-End Limerick Quiz” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the...
Elizabeth, in Dallas by way of Philadelphia, wondered whether she heard a fresh idiom in rest on one’s morals. The standard phrase is rest on one’s laurels, meaning to coast on past honors or accomplishments rather than keep striving. Its laurels...
Is it cheating to say you’ve read a book if you only listened to it on tape? Over the centuries, the way we think about reading has changed a lot. There was a time, for example, when reading silently was considered strange. Plus, what do you...
Chances are you’re not familiar with most of the books that win the Nobel Prize in literature because most of them aren’t translated into English. Fortunately, Words Without Borders is doing something about that. This is part of a complete...
A electronic teenager repellent? An alarm clock that runs away from you to make you’ll wake up? Yep, it’s the Ig Nobel Prizes, those awards for academic research that first makes you laugh and then makes you think. Martha and Grant honor...