The term sign of the times, denoting something indicative of the kinds of things happening in a particular period, goes back to the Gospel of Matthew. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Sign of the Times” Here’s...
It’s the Up Goer Five Challenge! Try to describe something complex using only the thousand most common words in English. It’s a useful mental exercise that’s harder than you might think. Also, if you want to make a room dark, you...
The idiom dead on, meaning “precisely,” might sound morbid, but it makes sense. It’s a reference to the fact that death is certain and absolute. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dead On” Hello, you...
A Quebec listener asks: In the phrases it’s a girl, or it’s raining, what exactly is the it here? It’s called the weather it or the dummy it, and it serves a placeholder inserted to make the sentence function grammatically. This is...
Betty in Idlewild, California, notices that when she repeats a word while writing, even an ordinary one like among, it can start to look misspelled or meaningless. That temporary blanking-out is called semantic satiation, the mind’s sense that a...
What makes a word a word? If something’s not in the dictionary, you might not be able to use it in Scrabble. But dictionaries aren’t the last word on whether a word is legitimate. If you use a word that someone else understands, then...