In northern Sweden, the word yes is widely communicated by a sound that’s reminiscent of someone sucking through a straw. It’s called the pulmonic ingressive. Linguist Robert Eklund calls this a neglected universal, meaning that...
Hi, all! In this week's archive episode, do you know the term "bike-shedding"? How about "tohubohu"? The former refers to being inappropriately focused on the minutiae of a project instead of the bigger picture (handy...
urine diversion toilet n.— «There, up a few steps on a tiled platform, sat a toilet unlike any I’d seen. Its pan was divided in two: solid waste went in the back, and the front compartment collected urine. The liquids and solids can...
This past weekend on "A Way with Words," we mulled over whether part of the recession-busting bailouts the government is proposing should be targeted at reviving the Federal Writers' Project of the 1930s. Get a taste of that, and...
Martha muses about the secret lives of flowers in this week’s podcast. She’s been pondering the lexical legacy of Carolus Linnaeus, the great Swedish botanist who nearly 300 years ago was criticized for his fascination with what was a...
twenty-minute takeout n.— «The “security check” used by the CIA to prepare a detainee for transport on a rendition plane was described to us by one source in the American intelligence community as a “twenty-minute takeout.” His...