A Pennsylvanian who relocated to North Carolina notes that many people in that part of the United States tend to leave the S off of the word cent when talking about money. This well-established feature of Appalachian and Southern varieties often...
The owner of a Berlin, Maryland, produce stand wants to know: When a customer is buying four ears of corn, should they say I have four corn or I have four ears of corn? Corn is a mass noun that can also be counted as a plural, just as we might say I...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
If you have two dogs that share a toy, do you write that as my dogs’ toy or my dogs’s toy? It’s one of those things to which we can come up with a logical answer, but then later we’ll catch ourselves doing a different...
This week: Do you ever find yourself less-than-specific about your age? Listeners share some of their favorite phrases for fudging that number, like: “Oh, I’m 29, plus shipping and handling.” Also in this episode: • Since ancient...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a tricky quiz with false answers. For example, if the plural of mouse is mice, then what’s the false plural of spouse? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Tricky Plural Word Quiz”...