How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes lots of words borrowed or adapted from French. Such linguistic mixing often happens when languages brush up against each other and speakers reach...
Jameela in Charlotte, North Carolina, says her family refers to their television’s remote control as the clicker, but her friends insist on calling it the remote. These devices go by other names as well, including doofer, flicker, zapper, and...
finger trouble n.— «Customers contacting the Helpline do so for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they don’t understand the remote control, the instruction book or are having problems caused by “finger trouble.” We will—using...