TagPangram

Episode 1655

Real Corker

Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital is a sensuous, exhilarating meditation about the strangeness of life on a space station, with its mix of tedious tasks and jaw-dropping views. And: a musician who rode the rails in his youth shares the slang he...

Pangram, the Redux Redux Redux

A Los Angeles, California, listener shares the following pangram, a succinct but understandable statement that contains all 26 letters of the alphabet: A quick fox jumps high / Vexing birds, zigzag winds fly / Haikus trap words, why? This is part of...

Episode 1564

Tribble Trouble

In Cockney rhyming slang, apples and pears is a synonym for “stairs,” and dustbin lids means kids. Plus, sniglets are clever coinages for things we don’t already have words for. Any guesses what incogsneeto means? It’s the...

Episode 1561

Mudlarking

Twice a day the River Thames recedes, revealing a muddy shoreline. Hobbyists known as mudlarks stroll the surface searching for objects that have found their way into the river over the centuries, everything from ancient Roman jewelry to modern...

Episode 1638

Pinking Shears

When you’re distracted by trying to get the perfect photo at a wedding or fiddling with your camera during a solar eclipse, you’re missing out on some of the experience itself. There’s a term for this: It’s called...