Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words. We've got cheese! It was our second week in a row talking about the books of David Crystal. (He deserves it!) This time, we plunged into the rich pages of his book "As They Say in...
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...
gangloading n.— «Yesterday I joined 14 students in the altitude training chamber at the Eighty-ninth Physiological Training Flight at Andrews Air Force Base in Camp Springs, Maryland. Wearing helmets and oxygen masks that covered...
trip n.— «In the parlance of the electric power industry, a “trip” means a piece of machinery stops operating. A series of feedwater system pumps supplying water to TMI-2’s steam generators tripped on the morning of March 28...
flybrid n.— «Nearly every F1 car will be a flybrid in 2009, as the race series tries to become more relevant to mass market trends. It’s also trying to convince potential fans it’s a “green” sport.…A flybrid is hybrid...
nuke the fridge v. phr.— Note: The short life of this term is ably covered by Jason Kottke. «In TV land, this phenomenon is known as “jumping the shark”: the moment when a once proud series swan-dives into putridity. It’s a...