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 price...
Text-messaging is destroying our kids’ ability to write, right? Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Texting and Writing Ability” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant...
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 piece of playground equipment you...
A biology student at Stanford University has a question that’s surely on the minds of many listeners: Is there’s an official term for “baby platypus”? He’s heard the term puggle used to denote these cute little critters, but is unsure if “puggle” is...