multimorbidity n.— «People with multiple health problems—a condition known as multimorbidity—are largely overlooked both in medical research and in the nation’s clinics and hospitals. The default position is to treat complicated patients...
Martha explains how experiments with dead frogs and live wires led to the invention of the battery, and inspired a couple of familiar English words.
Hey! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words," which this week was called "entertainingly erudite" by William Safire in the New York Times. Suh-weet! Our latest erudition came in the form of talk about "apple...
Howdy and happy new year! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." Last week there was no newsletter as we celebrated the new year by hauling our dictionaries out of the low-hanging winter sun. We wish they were...
ghost box n.— «I know it sounds crazy, and I know the ghost box is radio based and all sorts of sounds can come through, so it’s only logical to say that people are making words and sentences out of bits and pieces of radio transmission...
When it comes to text messaging and its effect on English, the linguistic apocalypse is not nigh. Quite the contrary, in fact. Grant talks about some eye-opening research about text-messaging and teen literacy. This is part of a complete episode...