Quntos KunQuest has been incarcerated at Angola, the Louisiana State Penitentiary, since 1997. His new novel This Life (Bookshop|Amazon), which draws on his experiences there, has earned acclaim in The New Yorker. KunQuest’s characters are vividly...
A Chicago-area listener wonders: When dictionaries go from print to online, are any words removed? What’s the best print dictionary to replace the old one on her dictionary stand? For more about dictionaries and their history, Grant recommends the...
Offbeat mascot names from Montana include the Powell County Wardens (so named because the high school is in the same county as the Montana State Prison), and the Missoula Loyola Sacred Heart Breakers. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...
It’s hard enough to get a new word into the dictionary. But what happens when lawmakers get involved? New Jersey legislators passed a resolution as part of an anti-bullying campaign urging dictionary companies to adopt the word upstander. It means...
Plenty of people write to dictionary editors asking for words to be added. It almost never works. But what if politicians make a special request? To urge adoption of the term upstander, as in “the opposite of bystander,” to honor those who stand up...
Jordan from Olympia, Washington, asks about oddball school mascots and the origin of the word mascot. Evergreen State College’s Geoduck — a giant clam native to the Pacific Northwest — belongs in the same memorable company as the UC Santa Cruz...
