Something that’s repaired in a makeshift, haphazard fashion, is said to be jury-rigged. Martha discusses the expression’s likely nautical origin and Grant tells how a different term, jerry-built, led to the variation jerry-rigged. This...
Need to type something in Linear B or Mayan? Want to make Japanese emoticons? Now you can. Grant explains why the release of Unicode 6 has many typescript aficionados doing the happy dance. This is part of a complete episode.
A lagniappe is a little something extra that a merchant might toss in for a customer, like a complimentary ball-point pen. What’s the origin of that word? This is part of a complete episode.
“Fish or cut bait.” What does it mean, exactly? Stop fishing and cut your line, or stop fishing and do something else useful, like cutting bait? This is part of a complete episode.
In an earlier episode, we discussed linguistic false friends, those words in foreign languages that look like familiar English words, but mean something quite different. Martha reads an email response from a listener who learned the hard way that in...
Quick, which is faster? Something that happens instantly or that happens instantaneously? A caller wants to know if there’s any difference between the two. This is part of a complete episode.