Do Americans use the same sign language as the British? And what do Japanese people use instead of umm? Plus, why do we vote at polling places? What goes into file 13? All this, a word quiz, commode vs. toilet, saditty and bougie, and cute stuff...
Everyone knows you don’t start a sentence with but. But why? Also, how voice recognition technology is changing the way we think and write and what English sounds like to foreigners. Plus, where cockamamie comes from, oddly translated movie...
Kathleen from Hebron, Connecticut, is curious about the term hashtag. She associates it with the symbol #, which she calls a pound sign. When that symbol, also known as a hash mark, doublecross, hatch mark, octothorpe, or number sign, is appended to...
What are those symbols cartoonists use in place of profanity? They’re called grawlixes — good to know for the next time you play a game we just invented called “Comic Strip Jargon or Pokemon?” This is part of a complete episode...
When a car rolls slowly through a stop sign, it’s often called a California stop or a California roll. But the Midwest has its own monikers for this sneaky move, including the farmer stop, the Chicago stop, and no cop, no stop. This is part of a...
Paul from Duluth, Minnesota, heard Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, quoting Boston Mayor Tom Menino, call a health-care law an alcatraz around his neck. The idiom is albatross around your neck, from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the...