Welcome to another A Way with Words newsletter! With any luck, our A Way with Words email messages don’t end up in your spam folder. But did you ever wonder why junk mail is called spam in the first place? There’s a funny story behind this term, and...
More words that entered the language around 1937: “Spam,” “telecast,” and “whoops.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “More 1937 Words” Here’s three more words from 1937. This is...
In a previous episode, we came upon a word mystery in a 1947 menu from Jackson, Mississippi, that mentions tang. The mystery has been solved! It wasn’t the drink, and it wasn’t the fish; it was Cudahy Tang, one of over a hundred knockoff...
There have been three brand-new episodes broadcast recently. Did you catch them? • Three weeks ago, it was Shank of the Evening, in which we talked about sports nicknames, flounder vs. founder, Laundromats vs. washaterias, Black Dutch...
Bavarian Chalet. Mushroom Basket. Moose Point. Who in the heck comes up with the names of paints, anyway? Martha and Grant ponder that mystery. They also explain why those annoying emails go by the name spam. And Grant explains the difference...
Why is that annoying stuff in your email box called spam? Grant has the answer. Here’s the Monty Python skit that inspired it. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Email Spam” I heard from Vicki in Madison, Wisconsin...
