We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing...
What’s the linguistic connection between pretend and pretension or pretentious? They all go back the Latin praetendere, meaning to put something forward. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “How Do “Pretend” and...
When you have to ask someone to repeat themselves three times and you still can’t figure out what they’re saying, you may as well feignderstand, or pretend to understand. It’s yet another made-up term from The Emotionary. This is...