Huzzah! It's "The Fighting Kewpies, Uh-hunh!" In this week's archive episode, we talk about some of the craziest names for school athletic teams. How about the Plainfield Fighting Quakers? Or the Maryville Spoofhounds? We also sort...
Howdy! In this week's archive episode: Do you know the meaning of "McGimpers"? How about "geetus"? We discuss these and other examples of underworld slang from the 1930s. In this show, crime novelist James Ellroy stops by to...
The Library of Congress is archiving the entire content of Twitter. Grant explains why that’s a gold mine for language researchers like David Bamman at Tufts University. You can see some of the results Bamman’s compiled at Lexicalist.com. This is...
As members of the Bob o’clock Facebook group know, the expression “Bob o’clock” means, “It’s 8:08!” The hosts discuss this and other silly ways to tell time inspired by the boxy numbers on a digital clock. This is part of a complete episode...
What’s the word for the gesture you make with your fingers when you want to make an image larger on an iPhone? Unpinch? Fwoop? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Unpinch” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Barbara from Dallas...
Grant and Martha share some of their favorite tweets from Fake AP Stylebook, the Twitter feed that tweaks journalistic style and tropes, such as “Do not change weight of gorilla in phrase, ‘800-lb gorilla in the room.’ Correct weight is 800 lbs. DO...