If you have a word lover on your gift list, Martha and Grant have book recommendations for you. For adults, Martha recommends linguist Geoffrey Nunberg’s collection of essays, The Years of Talking Dangerously. For kids, Grant’s been...
Many of us learned the rule about using the preposition between when talking about two items, but among when talking about more than two. In reality, though, the rule is a little more complicated. This is part of a complete episode.
Does it bug you when people talk about themselves in the third person? A caller finds herself mightily annoyed by this habit, which she observes especially among politicians and celebrities. There’s a word for the practice of referring to...
demanufacturing n.— «“Pretty much everything with an electronic pulse, we deal with,” said CEO David Kutoff. Materials Processing takes apart TVs and other equipment, a process known as “demanufacturing,” and separates...
It’s the wacky title of a new book by language enthusiast Elizabeth Little which has Martha and Grant talking about whether Coca-Cola and Chevy ran into cultural translation problems when selling products abroad. Did the Chevy Nova really sell...
geoengineering n.— «The process is called “geoengineering” and it basically involves tinkering with the planet’s climate to find alternate ways to prevent the very worst effects of runaway global warming.» —“Science...