Hi! In our latest episode: How do rules of grammar develop, anyway? What's "tarantula juice"? How did "boondoggle" come to mean "a waste of taxpayer money"? Plus, funny movie mistakes, and a new spin on the slang...
The Bangladeshi idiom translated as oiling your mustache in anticipation of the jackfruit tree bearing fruit roughly matches English don’t count your chickens before they hatch. The image depends on cultural context: jackfruit is juicy, a mustache...
What’s the difference between a geek and a nerd? An Ohio professor of popular culture wants to talk about it. Here’s the a MetaFilter thread and a Venn diagram about the differences. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Some children don’t talk until they’re age three or older, then go on to do just fine. Why do some kids start speaking relatively late in life? The hosts talk about a recent Ask MetaFilter thread on that topic. This is part of a complete...
Whoa, hey! It's another newsletter from Martha and Grant, hosts of "A Way with Words." How's your handwriting? Penmanship is one of the things we talked about on our latest episode, as well as "creaky voice" (kind of the...
golden thread n.— «This reluctance to sign up for the army life is being ascribed partly to the merger last year of the six Scottish regiments into one, with the consequent loss of regional identity. This identity is referred to as the...