Book recommendations and the art of apology. Martha and Grant share some good reads, including an opinionated romp through English grammar, a Spanish-language adventure novel, an account of 19th-century dictionary wars, and a gorgeously illustrated...
If you’re in a book club, how do you decide what books to read? In some groups, everyone takes turns choosing a book. In others, they take a vote. Others encourage everyone to read a different book and then report on it to the group. Emily...
Mahalia from San Diego, California, has a friendly disagreement with her husband over the phrase it takes all kinds. She understands the expression to mean that the world requires many different kinds of people to function. He thinks it means that...
While reading a translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot (Bookshop|Amazon), a listener is puzzled by the sentence For the most part these omniscient gentlemen are out at elbow, and receive a salary of seventeen rubles a month. What...
The German idiom Du gehst mir auf den Keks means “You’re annoying me” or “you’re getting on my nerves.” The literal translation? “You go me on the cookie” or “You’re walking on my cookie...
The term kit bag question refers to a question that’s better not asked, lest you suffer a consequence you might otherwise have avoided. It’s a translation of Modern Hebrew she’elat kit bag, a slang expression that arose among members of...