Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...
Hayley, a poet, grew up in Kansas City, then moved to Minnesota’s Twin Cities. After the last two winters there, she’s begun to wonder: Have English speakers ever referred to more than four seasons in English? Do other cultures measure...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski borrows a classic word game from Joseph Shipley called Twin Ends. This is part of a complete episode.
cleanout n.— «Salvation comes in the form of large cleansing cool winds that sweep in from the northwest. But as luck would have it, Rochester is the last to benefit from Mother Nature’s air freshener. After pushing through Detroit Lakes...
mouser n.— «Over the weekend, 32-year-old Michael Krube was arrested for trespassing in the St. Paul city sewer system. He’s known as a “mouser,” a slang term for a group of risk-takers who explore caves, tunnels and sewer...
Twin Peaks approach n.— «It was influenced by what is known in regulatory circles as the Twin Peaks approach, used in Australia and the Netherlands. The idea is to create two financial regulators that are given separate responsibilities...