Those soft felt hats that folks like the man on the Quaker oatmeal box wear? They’re called wide-awakes. The etymology of this term is actually a pun—a reference to the fact that they’re made from smooth material that has no nap, a soft, fuzzy...
Our Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a game using three-word phrases linked by the word and. For example, what idiom could be described literally as a country carnival found in the center of town? Hint: this phrase could also be used to describe a good...
Anne Louise from San Diego wonders why she and a friend call wishing to see sunlight during long opera-company workdays a pipe dream. A pipe dream is “an unobtainable hope” or “an unrealistic fantasy,” and the phrase comes from opium pipes and the...
Nathan in Leesburg, Florida, asks about the phrase suss out after hearing it on a technology podcast in the sense of “investigate.” The verb is spelled suss, and to suss something out means to look into it, work out what is going on, or take a...
Infracaninophile means a lover or helper of the underdog, a word Kate in Evansville, Indiana, remembered from graduate school in social work. Its parts are nicely transparent: infra-, under, canino, dog, and -phile, lover. As far as anyone can tell...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a literature quiz based on descriptions of characters in novels. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Literary Character Quiz” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett...