Jennifer teaches yoga on the beach on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and she and her students have been collecting synonyms for derrière, such as dump truck, rear end, and badonkadonk. The last of these has been around for at least 25 years, and was...
How and why do words from one language find their way into another? Vietnamese, for instance, includes lots of words borrowed or adapted from French. Such linguistic mixing often happens when languages brush up against each other and speakers reach...
Unparalleled misalignments are pairs of phrases in which the words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other, but the phrases themselves mean different things. For example, the phrase blanket statement can be paired with cover story...
Here’s an unparalleled misalignment in which the words in one pair are synonyms of the words in the other pair: organic chemistry and carbon dating. This is part of a complete episode.
Here’s a clever unparalleled misalignment, in which the word or words in one phrase are each synonyms of the words in the other, but the terms themselves mean different things: break ground and Cleveland. This is part of a complete episode.