How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked...
Jill in Shelton, Washington, says that when she lived in Southern California, she understood the word garbage to mean food scraps, with trash referring to everything else collected curbside. Historically, garbage has referred to the wet, disgusting...
David in Portland, Oregon, wants a word for that moment of puzzlement when you’re trying to figure out which bin to use for tossing your recyclables. Discomposted, maybe? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “That Moment of Recycling...
A Twitter beef between Kanye West and Wiz Khalifa has a listener wondering about the phrase talk out the side of one’s neck, meaning to “talk trash about someone.” It’s simply a variation of talking out of the side of one’s mouth. This is part of a...
Do Americans use the same sign language as the British? And what do Japanese people use instead of umm? Plus, why do we vote at polling places? What goes into file 13? All this, a word quiz, commode vs. toilet, saditty and bougie, and cute stuff...
File 13 is slang for a wastebasket, the place for paperwork nobody intends to process. Maria in Indianapolis hears it around her office, but the expression is older than recent office banter. It starts showing up in the early 1940s as World War II...