What do you say if you have guests over and someone in your family has stray food left on the face? In some households, the secret warning is “there’s a gazelle on the lawn.” But why a gazelle? Also, this week: the term for a party...
A medical transcriptionist who majored in English reports that her co-workers are squabbling over a sentence: “The patient was brought to the operating room, and laid supine on the operating-room table.” This is part of a complete...
What’s the proper past tense of the word text? Texted or text? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Texted vs. Text” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Good morning, this is Paris Romero in Fallbrook, California. Hello...
Stories From The Onion In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss not-to-be-believed articles about language from the satirical newspaper The Onion, including one headlined “Underfunded Schools Forced to Cut Past Tense from...
Sure, the present tense of sneak is easy, but what about the past? Is it sneaked or snuck? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Past Tense of Sneak” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is J.B. I’m calling from...
It’s one of the biggest grammatical bugaboos of all, the one that bedevils even the most earnest English students: Is it lie or lay? Martha shares a trick for remembering the difference. See below for her clip-and-save chart of these verbs...