Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words. We've got cheese! It was our second week in a row talking about the books of David Crystal. (He deserves it!) This time, we plunged into the rich pages of his book "As They Say in...
A listener in Brazil challenges Martha’s pronunciation of the odd English word antipodes. Their email exchange leads Martha to muse about a favorite collection of poems, where she first encountered this word.
brouse n.— Note: A variant spelling of, and derived from, the verb “browse.” The Oxford English Dictionary has this term dated to 1552. «Hiram said the winter of 1833 was bad for working out so they didn’t get much of the...
ricket n.— Note: The Oxford English Dictionary has one cite for this word from 1958, defining it as criminals’ slang meaning “a blunder, mistake.” «Hearn is still involved in snooker, supplying Sky with the premier...
throw n. the distance that a key or button can be pressed, as on a computer keyboard. Etymological Note: Directly related to “throw” in mechanical engineering, defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “the action or motion of a...
whimperative n. a command or request phrased as a polite or indirect question. Also wh- imperative. Editorial Note: This word is especially used in the linguistic study of discourse. Thanks to Ben Zimmer for helping to clarify this definition...