anti-phrasing n.— «Wolfram Alpha works in the same way as Graffiti did: As Steven Wolfram says in his talk at the Berkman Center, people start out writing natural language but pretty quickly trim it down to just the key concepts (a...
What do you call the wheeled contraption that you push around the grocery store? Shopping cart? Shopping carriage? Shopping wagon? Buggy? A former Kentuckian wonders if anyone besides her calls them bascarts. Check out this dialect map featuring...
Who put the piping in the expression “piping hot”? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Piping Hot” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett...
What’s a Luddite? Martha explains that this term for “someone resistant to technological change” has its roots in a form of populist rage in the early 19th century. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Hey, hey, hey! It's another fat newsletter from "A Way with Words"! We never run out of things to talk about. Take this past weekend's show, for example. We tracked down the history of "Polly wanna cracker." It turns out...
If you work in the software industry, you may already know the term dogfooding, which means “to use one’s own product.” Grant explains how dogfood became a verb. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...