Pickle, baboon, cupcake, snorkel, pumpkin, Kalamazoo—let’s face it, some words are just plain funny. But what makes some words funnier than others? Martha and Grant consider this question with an assist from Neil Simon’s play (and movie)...
It’s a grammatical question that trips up even the best writers sometimes: Is it who or whom? A physician says he likes the sentiment in a colleague’s email signature, but he’s not sure it’s 100% grammatical. The sentence:...
Ever been met with a quizzical look and the question, “Do what?” The hosts discuss this dialectal equivalent of “How’s that?” or “Come again?” This is part of a complete episode.
pooled spray n.— Note: Describes the same event as this citation for spray. «Mr Obama’s team, however, said that there never had been plans for anything but only a pooled spray, in which a handful of journalists pose questions in a more...
A man who owns a parrot says that when people see his bird, they invariably ask the question “Polly wanna cracker?” He wonders about the origin of that psittacine phrase, meaning parrot-like. One of the earliest uses of the phrase so far...
strolling supper n.— «I “get” the fact that a “strolling supper” is another term for “buffet,” but I have a question: what happens if the “strolling” supper gets up and leaves...