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...
Hannah from Menominee, Michigan, grew up hearing her father invite people out for a drive with, Let’s go for a scud. He traces it to an inside joke about his 1976 Mercury Montego MX and the names of MX and Scud missiles, but scud is also an old verb...
Martha recently spoke at a fundraiser for radio station KUAC in Alaska. While there in Fairbanks, she explored the University of Alaska’s magnificent Museum of the North, and paid a visit to Running Reindeer Ranch, where she learned a lot about...
Ashley in Danville, Kentucky, says that if she’s looking pale or wan, her mother will say You look like a haint. The dialectal term haint is used throughout much of the American South to mean “ghost” or “evil spirit” and is a form of the word haunt...
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...