Cara in San Diego, California, wonders why English has monologue and dialogue, but unicycle and bicycle rather than monocycle and dicycle. The dia- in dialogue means “through,” as in diagonal and diameter, not “two,” and duologue is the term for a...
Is there a word or phrase that’s particular to your hometown? The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary would like to hear about it. In Cincinnati, for example, three-way refers to a kind of style of serving chili. You can contribute your...
Colleen from Fairbanks, Alaska, is pondering the word hangry, a portmanteau of hungry and angry, and applied to someone who’s irritable as the result of hunger. Although hangry has been around sincet at least the 1950s, it enjoyed a boost in...
On Twitter, @mollybackes notes that in Wisconsin, a Tyme machine dispenses cash, not time travel. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Tyme Travel” We were talking earlier about the Twitter hashtag wordswhereyouare, which...
Craig, a whale biologist in Alaska, wonders how many words have been adopted into English from such languages as Inuit, Yupik, Tlingit and Inupiaq. Indigenous languages in the far North have contributed mukluk, malamute, kayak, and parka. The word...
Honeypots is a children’s game in which players sit or squat with their hands gripping the backs of their thighs, while other players lift them up by the armpits and shake or swing them in an attempt to make them lose their grip. What fun...
