David from Black Mountain, North Carolina, is fond of the Spanish term that originally meant “someone who shares the same name as another person” (which is one of the meanings of “namesake” in English) and has expanded to mean “someone with whom you...
Nancy in Newport, Kentucky, says friends used to refer to her young son and daughter as a pigeon pair. Doves and pigeons tend to have two chicks at a time, and at one point, it was believed that these offspring always consisted of one male and one...
On our Facebook group, listeners are playfully crowdsourcing what people in different professions might punningly plant. For example, what kind of fruit tree might twins cultivate? What type of flower might be planted by a professional mime? This is...
Viewers of the movie First Man, about the Gemini space program, may be surprised to learn that within National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the name Gemini is pronounced more like JEM-i-nee. Gemini is the Latin word for twin, and the source...
If you tell someone you have a set of twins, does that mean you have two kids or four kids? It depends on the meaning of the word set. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Set of Twins” Hi, you have A Way with Words. This is Bill...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski borrows a classic word game from Joseph Shipley called Twin Ends. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Twin Ends Word Game” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette. And I’m Grant Barrett, and...

