Barbara in Norfolk, Virginia, wonders about the drawl of Southern American English. A great resource on how people perceive others’ dialects is the work of linguist Dennis Preston and his book Perceptual Dialectology. This is part of a...
How do you pronounce the word potable, which means drinkable? A woman in the Navy stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, says most of her fellow sailors pronounce it with a short o, but she pronounces it with a long o. The word derives from Latin potare...
Greg, calling from Norfolk, Virginia, says that when he uses the word smarmy, some people seem not to know it. What does it mean? Where does it come from? Is it even a real word? It’s related to an old verb meaning to smear or be-daub. It’s kind of...
ghost pot n.— «The commission has purchased side-scanning radars, installed the equipment onto watermen’s boats, trained them on how to use the devices, and turned them loose in search of lost traps, also known as ghost pots...