There’s a frisson you get when you meet a word for the first time—feeling pleasantly stumped in between wondering, “What the heck does that mean?” and hurrying off to find out. Martha and Grant talk about some terms that had just...
Theories about how Latin Americans came to use the term gringo as a disparaging word for foreigners. We can easily rule out the one about the song “Green Grow the Lilacs,” but what about the rest? This is part of a complete episode.
Many of us learned the rule about using the preposition between when talking about two items, but among when talking about more than two. In reality, though, the rule is a little more complicated. This is part of a complete episode.
Heigh-ho! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words," and we've got treats. Climb into our van! There are two minicasts for you, for one thing. What’s the deal with using the two-letter postal code abbreviations...
performal adj.— «“There’s a macho performal nature that some of these people crave,” she said. “And what better a performance than the blood and guts of butchery?”» —“Young Idols With Cleavers Rule the Stage” by Kim...
Twittering, tweeting, twirting—it’s rare to see a whole new body of language appear right before your eyes. But that’s what’s happening with Twitter. We discuss the snappy new shorthand of the twitterati. Also, why do people feel...