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Episode 1407

Hell’s Bells

The language of restaurant menus. Need a dictionary to get through a dinner menu? Research shows the longer the description of a particular dish, the more expensive it will be. Plus: What’s the best way to use a thesaurus? DON’T —...

Brobdingnagian and Unabridged

Why do spelling bees use such strange words — often foreign words that almost nobody uses? Like cymotrichous, stromuhr, Laodicean, guerdon, serrefine, and Ursprache? We answered that question in last week’s episode — it’s what happens...

Myriad Of

Should you use myriad or myriad of? Actually, either is fine. Here’s what David Foster Wallace had to say about the question in his commentary for the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus: “[A]ny reader who’s bugged by a myriad...

Hurt Locker Etymology

The 2010 winner of the “Best Picture” Oscar has a Seattle woman wondering about the term hurt locker. Ben Zimmer wrote about it recently in his column at the Visual Thesaurus and we talk about it, too. Here’s the searing poem by...

Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus

The second edition of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus is chock-full of synonyms, of course, but what makes it special are the essays and usage notes by authors such as Simon Winchester, David Lehman, Zadie Smith, and David Foster...

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