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.
repertory grid n.— «Professor Canter’s group conducted a series of interviews with 49 terrorists—people convicted of bombing and killings. The work was done outside of the UK because of the refusal of the British authorities to facilitate...
In this episode, Martha and Grant honor winners of the Ig Nobel Prizes, those wacky awards for weird academic research, and they help a caller decipher a puzzling word from a personals ad: what does paratereseomaniac mean?
What’s a dittler? What’s a dit? A traveling preacher named Fred says he’s heard these strange terms in parts of Appalachia used to refer to “baby chicks” and “little ducklings.” We share some of our own...