Welcome to another A Way with Words newsletter! With any luck, our A Way with Words email messages don’t end up in your spam folder. But did you ever wonder why junk mail is called spam in the first place? There’s a funny story behind this term, and...
In the 1970s, physicists predicted the discovery of two quarks called T and B for top and bottom. Some poetically-minded physicists argued that the T and B quarks should instead be called truth and beauty, but the terms top and bottom eventually won...
[Grover voice:] Hello, everybodeee! We’ve been cranking out brand-new episodes, so if you’re behind, there are treats in store: • In last week’s episode, “Gone Pecan,” we explained how how gay got that way, we laid...
Language serves as a generational marker, leaving speakers of different ages with mutual misunderstandings of pop culture references and idioms. We look at the historical lack of distinction between the words done and finished, clarify the origins...
