We’ll be celebrating the United States’ 250-year anniversary in about 12 years, and if you’re looking for a neat, shiny term for the event, how about bicenquinquagenary, or perhaps sestercentennial? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Does your family use a special word you’ve never heard anywhere else? A funny name for “the heel of a loaf of bread,” perhaps, or for “visiting relatives who won’t leave.” In this week’s episode, Martha and Grant discuss “family words,” and Martha...
A Princeton University student wonders if his school can lay claim to being the first to apply the Latin word campus to the grounds of an institution of higher learning. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “How “Campus” Came to Mean...
ambulance-chasing n.— «As a result, theorists haven’t been able to resist interpreting these statistically suspect results. It’s an activity that Neil Turok of Princeton University (himself a theorist) describes as “ambulance chasing—running after...

