Ronald in Columbia, South Carolina, hears some people pronounce the word help as if they’re saying hope. There’s a British dialectal version of the past tense of the verb help that is spelled holp or holpen or hope, which have hung on in...
Eels, orts, and Wordle! Sweden awarded its most prestigious literary award to a book about…eels. The Book of Eels reveals the mysterious life cycle of this sea creature and its significance for famous figures from Aristotle to Sigmund Freud. Plus...
Advice about college essays from the winner of a top prize for children’s literature: Kelly Barnhill encourages teens to write about experiences that are uniquely their own, from a point of view that is theirs and no one else’s. Plus...
Our conversation about words that are simply fun to say (such as oligopoly, or “domination of a market by just a few producers”) reminded a listener in Jackson, Tennessee, of a scene from a 1955 movie The Glass Slipper. A woman says she...
Ruth in Cincinnati, Ohio, is curious about the lyrics to the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic “Maria” from the movie The Sound of Music. Maria, a nun who’s not quite a good fit for the abbey, is described as “a...
Some people work hard to lose their accent in order to fit in. Others may be homesick for the voices they grew up with and try to reclaim them. How can you regain your old accent? Also, a compelling book about scientific taxonomy shows how humans...