The word emoji doesn’t come from the English words emotion or emoticon. Instead, it is a combination of the Japanese words e for “picture” and moji “written character,” so the blend emoji literally means “pictogram.” In Japanese, the word...
Why do we write the word I as a capital letter when using it to refer to ourselves? Is English the only language that capitalizes the first person singular pronoun? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Why is the Pronoun...
Mark in Indianapolis, Indiana, wonders about the history of the second person singular and plural in English. At one time, thee and thou were singular, and you and ye were plural. By the early 17th century, thou and thee as familiar terms of address...
“If you come to a fork in the road… take it!” Baseball legend Yogi Berra was famous for such head-scratching observations. What most people don’t realize, though, is that the former Yankees star often wasn’t the first...
A listener who works with computers asked about the difference between premise and premises, especially when it comes to the idea of on- or off-premises computing. Going back to the 1600’s, the term premises has meant a “location”...
Alumnae is the plural for a group of all-female former students, while alumni is the term for all-male groups, or co-ed groups. The male singular is alumnus, and the female is alumna. In informal settings, you can just use alum or alums. This is...