Our conversation about women who use the nicknames Gertie or Gert as jokingly affectionate terms for each other, prompted a listener in Melbourne, Australia, to speculate that it’s a nod to Gertrude Lawrence, an English performer who rose to...
Following up on our conversation about indefinite hyperbolic numerals like forty-eleven and zillion, we discuss humpty-twelve. Another slang term used to denote a large quantity is telephone numbers, which can be applied to “an excessive amount of...
There’s a difference between a crank call and a prank call. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Crank Call vs. Prank Call” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Storm calling from San Antonio, Texas. Hi, Storm. Welcome. What...
After an earlier conversation about ending phone calls with mmm-bye, Esther remembers her mother answering the phone with Nyello! The greeting was so memorable that Esther and friends once called from a slumber party just to hear it and laugh. This...
Listeners respond to our earlier conversation about ending a telephone call with mmm-bye. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Mmm-Bye” You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett...
It’s commonly heard these days that English is going to hell in a handbasket, but it’s worth remembering that we’ve always said things like this. A hundred years ago, as telephones became more and more common, sticklers railed against the popular...