A San Antonio, Texas, listener is puzzled about a story in The Guardian about Mavis Staples speculating about her romance with Bob Dylan: “If we’d had some little plum-crushers, how our lives would be. The kids would be singing now, and Bobby and I...
Hi, all -- In this week's episode of "A Way with Words": If you want to make a room cooler, do you "turn up" the air conditioning? Or do you "turn it down"? Also, "croaker" meaning a "hundred-dollar...
A hazy, hot, and humid hello! In this week’s archive episode, we take on headlines that make you do a double take, such as “Child’s Stool Great for Use in Garden” and “Milk Drinkers Turn To Powder.” We discuss a few of these bloopers, and why...
This week, McGimpers, geetus, and other underworld lingo from the 1930s. Crime novelist James Ellroy stops by to talk slang terms and reveals his own favorite. Also, is the expression “Hear, hear!” or “Here, here!”? Is it bran-new or brand-new? The...
Grant talks about the lingo of criminals from 1930s. Here are more examples from police reporter Ben Kendall’s 1931 Los Angeles Times article, “Underworld ‘Lingo’ Brought Up-to-Date.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Crime Lingo...
voice writing n.— «In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The “writer”—really a speaker—repeats testimony into a...
