Greetings! In last weekend’s archive episode, we wondered who thinks up those crazy names for paint chips. We also discussed “spam” and “gringo,” dashes and semicolons, the term “first annual,” and wearing...
Greetings! In our latest show, we talk about an expression familiar to many African-Americans but little known outside that community, "I couldn't buy a louse in a wrestling jacket." Also, what does it mean if your dog is...
A listener in Dallas, Texas, asks about frenetic, a word he heard from a business-school professor, and how it differs from frantic. Both adjectives trace back to a Greek root meaning “brain” or “mind,” also found in words such as frenzy and...
Ciao! In this week's archive episode: If your family has guests over, how do you warn each other if one of you has a stray crumb on the face? Some families do so with the surreptitious code phrase, "There's a gazelle on the lawn."...
A woman from Indianapolis is trying to convince her grandmother that it’s okay for restaurant servers to refer to both male and female customers as you guys. Grandma says it’s sexist. Our caller maintains it’s fine, drawing an...
Many of us learned the rule about using the preposition between when talking about two items, but among when talking about more than two. In reality, though, the rule is a little more complicated. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...