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...
share-house n.— «Many weekenders stay in what is known as a “share-house”, sprawling mansions shared by as many as 30 twenty-to-thirty-somethings, who often sleep six to a room in a scenario that calls to mind the TV shows Big Brother and...
dose n.— «Then on Tuesday, at one of the many literary events I attend, I saw Eva, a lass we had a short ‘dose’ as they call them—as if women are innocuous inoculations—when I was 25 years old, fresh from college, and she was a stroke of...
A Michigander wants to know about the difference between titled and entitled. She’d assumed that a book is titled Gone with The Wind and a person is entitled to compensation for something. Grant and Martha explain it’s a little more...
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. Transcript of “Instantly vs...
In this episode, Grant offers peek at some expressions he’s nominating for the American Dialect Society’s Word of the Year vote in January. Will it be “w00t,” “subprime,” or something else? You can also check out...
