In this week's episode, we go from hip-hop to a public television show about the intra- and inter-class conflicts in a British manor house. We also talk about "flupgrades," what you might call it when a software update...
Hi, all -- In this week's episode of "A Way with Words": If you want to make a room cooler, do you "turn up" the air conditioning? Or do you "turn it down"? Also, "croaker" meaning a...
When it comes to proper grammar, “Where you at?” ain’t where it’s at. A mother is concerned that her child will pick up such malapropisms as “Where you at?” and “My mother and me went to the store.”...
Hi, all — We’re back after a brief summer hiatus. So much to catch up on! In last weekend’s archive edition, we discussed “interrobangs,” “pronequarks,” “catios,” “horse dumplings,”...
Grant is pleased as punch about BYU Professor Mark Davies’ new Google Books Corpus, which contains entries for every word ever in the entire Google Books database. In addition to parts of speech and definitions, the site provides contextual...
How do children acquire language? Do they start with nouns, like “Mama” and “cat,” then graduate to verbs and other parts of speech? Grant explains that language acquisition starts even earlier, with children simply emulating...