Is the brand in brand-new connected to the kind of brand left by a hot iron? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “”Brand” in “Brand New”” Hello, welcome to A Way with Words. Hi, this is Giovanni Cruz...
Monica in Tallahassee, Florida, says that while reading the book Flossie and the Fox to her children, she wondered: What’s the right way for a parent to render dialect if the dialect is not one’s own? This is part of a complete episode...
You may have heard the advice that to build your vocabulary you should read, read, and then read some more – and make sure to include a wide variety of publications. But what if you just don’t have that kind of time? Martha and Grant...
The phrase the land of the living goes back to passages in the Bible like Psalm 52:5. Since at least the 1700s, this expression has been used to denote the realm of those still alive. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Land of...
Pepper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, wonders why something valuable to someone is called the apple of their eye. The expression apple of one’s eye dates back to the ninth century. It comes from misunderstanding the pupil of the eye as a sphere and...
A caller from coastal North Carolina says that in her part of the country, people use the word mommicked to mean flustered or deeply frustrated. It derives from mammock, which means to tear or muddle, and was used that way in Shakespeare’s...