Katie in Tallahassee, Florida, saw a friend cooking with what she called a Scottish spurtle, a kitchen utensil that looks like a wooden dowel with a knob on the end, used to stir hot cereals and rice. Soon after, her husband saw an infomercial on...
Trevor in Austin, Texas, notes that when his young son was talking about drawing a cat, but erasing part of it, the boy used the term deleting rather than erasing. Should he correct his son, or is this a natural evolution of language in the digital...
Harry from Falls Church, Virginia, wonders about the many meanings and uses of the words troll and trolling. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Trolls and Trolling” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Good afternoon. This is Harry from...
Why does English derive words for some colors, such as blue and orange, from French, but not words for other colors, such as black and white? A fantastic resource about the history of colors is Kassia St. Clair’s The Secret Lives of Color. This is...
A Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, listener notes that the word cunning is sometimes used to describe a cute baby. In the 14th century, this adjective had to do with the idea of knowing, and eventually also acquired the meaning of quaint or...
A seventh-grader from Colorado wonders where the word freckle comes from. This word’s origin is a bit murky but appears to be related to old Scandinavian term rooted in the idea of “scattering,” like the seeds that freckles resemble. The German word...