Kara in Charlotte, North Carolina, was shopping in New Brunswick, Canada, hoping to find a warm hat. She asked for a toboggan, but the store clerk was incredulous. Depending on where you’re from toboggan can mean either “a long, knitted...
A magnificent new book celebrates the richness and diversity of 450 years of written and spoken English in what is now the United States. It’s called The People’s Tongue, and it’s a sumptuous collection of essays, letters, poems...
Bob from Mount Airy, North Carolina, says that while growing up in Michigan, he and others said Brr! in cold weather. But where he lives now, he often hears people exclaim Oosh! As noted in Gratitude for Shoes: Growing up Poor in the Smokies...
We tend to take the index of a book for granted, but centuries ago, these helpful lists were viewed with suspicion. Some even worried that indexes would harm reading comprehension! A witty new book tells the story. Plus, the Latin term bona fides...
Charlie from Columbia, South Carolina, wonders about a nickname for his state, South Cack. University of North Carolina linguist Bonnie Taylor-Blake has researched this term and its variants extensively. They include Cackalacky, Cackalacka, Calinky...
In just seconds, online text generators and chatbots can produce whole paragraphs of sophisticated prose. But what do advances in artificial intelligence mean for writers? What is lost and what’s gained when machine-writing replaces the work...