Ever try to write a well-known passage in limerick form? It’s harder than you think. How about this one: “There once was a lady who’s sure / All that glitters is golden and pure/ There’s a stairway that heads up to heaven...
Saying “I feel,” instead of saying “I think” or “I suppose,” is both prevalent and controversial, particularly among women. A Stanford study found that prefacing a sentence with “I feel,” instead of...
The longer the description of an item on a menu, the more expensive it’ll likely be. In The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu, Stanford University linguist Dan Jurafsky shows that with each extra letter in a menu description, the...
The language of restaurant menus. Need a dictionary to get through a dinner menu? Research shows the longer the description of a particular dish, the more expensive it will be. Plus: What’s the best way to use a thesaurus? DON’T —...
Feeling fankled? It’s a Scots English word that means “messed up” or “confused.” In this week’s episode, Grant and Martha also discuss a whole litter of synonyms for dust bunny, a slew of different terms for the...
brass-plate bank n.— «He was first investigated 20 years ago when he became a subject of a joint Scotland Yard-FBI investigation into so-called “brass-plate” banks on the Caribbean island of Montserrat. The investigation was set up after...