In this week’s puzzle, Quiz Guy John Chaneski is looking for phrases in which the only vowel is the letter “A.” Try this clue: “This person said, ‘I have spent all my life with dance and being a dancer. It’s...
voice writing n.— «In the US, court reporters have abandoned stenotype machines, whose keyboards use chord-like combinations to represent sounds, for a technique called voice writing. The “writer”—really a speaker—repeats...
fitting the flaps n.— «Lip Synchronisation, known in America as “fitting the flaps,” is a means of ensuring that the sound of the words being spoken matched the lip movements of the onscreen speaker.» —“Lost in...
A recent article in The New Yorker magazine about the late writer David Foster Wallace has Martha musing about Wallace’s stem-winding sentences, and the word stem-winder.
carabao English n.— «Whenever you hear a non-native English speaker, a Filipino specifically, uttering broken “carabao” English, or a version you are not used to hearing, please reserve your criticism.» —“World has more...
transmale adj.— «“A transmale speaker guy” gave a talk at a meeting of his high school’s Gay Straight Alliance, and Rey was inspired.…During one of their days together, Melissa, who was immersed in campus gender activism...