If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
One of the most powerful words you’ll ever hear — and one of the most poignant — isn’t in dictionaries yet. But it probably will be one day. The word is endling, and it means “the last surviving member of a species.” The...
A woman who immigrated from the Philippines to the United States wonders: If you’re studying a second language and start dreaming in it, does that mean you’ve reached the point of fluency? English has adopted several words from her...
Erica from Troy, Tennessee, wonders if the word boondocks, meaning “a remote place” is related to the name of frontier explorer Daniel Boone. Out in the boondocks and out in the boonies, derive from the Tagalog word for...
We’ve talked before about that stuff that builds up in your eyes after a night’s sleep, and listeners keep chiming in with more, including googlies, eye-winkers, and from a listener who grew up in the Philippines, morning stars. This is...
If you’re inappropriately focused on the minutiae of a project instead of the bigger picture, you’re said to be bike-shedding. Grant talks about that modern slang term and Martha discusses a word that goes way back in time, right back to...