A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...
An artist asks strangers to write haiku about the pandemic and gets back poetic, poignant glimpses of life under lockdown. Plus, the new book Queenspotting features the colorful language of beekeeping! Bees tell each other about a good source of...
Dallas, who lives in Eugene, Oregon, wonders why we use number one and number two as euphemisms for “pee” and “poo.” This is part of a complete episode.
Why do so many people in the Keystone State refer to it with the letters P-A rather than sounding out all the syllables in Pennsylvania? Especially when they say a city in that state and then Pee Ay? This is part of a complete episode.
Writers and where they do their best creative work. A new book on Geoffrey Chaucer describes the dark, cramped, smelly room where he wrote his early work. Which raises the question: What kind of space do you need to produce your best writing...
If you’re a parent looking for ways to warn your kids not to play with matches, you could do worse than “If you play with fire, you’ll pee the bed.” Similar admonitions are used around the world, apparently because a child...