Diane in Midland, Texas, asks why so many English words beginning with sn, including sneer, snarl, snot, snide, and snooty, carry negative or nose-related meanings. Phonesthesia is the term for associating certain sounds with particular meanings. In...
Sharing a secret language. Did you ever speak in gibberish with a childhood pal, adding extra syllables to words so the adults couldn’t understand what you were saying? Such wordplay isn’t just for kids—and it’s not just limited to...
A listener in Greenville, Tennessee, wonders about how the word meta went from prefix to adjective. Meta is simply a word used to describe something that’s about itself. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Getting Meta...
Preheat, as in preheat the oven, doesn’t mean “heat before heating.” It’s a single word with a concrete idea, akin to “prepay.” It’s perfectly acceptable to use. This is part of a complete episode...
Why does the prefix in- sometimes make a synonym rather than an antonym? In the case of invaluable, the prefix is still a negation, since it suggests that something’s value is incalculable. Michael Quinion‘s website affixes.org shows how...
How much humor and personality can you pack into a 140-character update? A lot, it turns out. Martha and Grant talk about funny Twitter feeds. Also this week, the origins of skosh and “can’t hold a candle,” why dragonflies are...
