A San Antonio, Texas, listener recalls that when she was a youngster, she’d pester her mother by asking the name of lots and lots of rocks on the ground. Her mother eventually began referring to those specimens as leaverites — as in “leave ’er right...
A MacGuffin isn’t the name of a breakfast sandwich, but it could be — that is, if a movie involves characters trying to get that sandwich. The MacGuffin, also spelled McGuffin or maguffin, is any object in a film that drives the story forward, like...
In the movie Avatar, the characters battle over a rare and valuable mineral called unobtanium. A mechanical engineer says he had a hard time getting into the movie because in his world, the word unobtanium means something different. This is part of...
Why do auctioneers talk so fast? Martha and Grant discuss the rapid-fire speech of auctioneers, and how it gets you to bid higher. Also, why so many books have ridiculously long titles, where you’d have sonker for dessert, and an appreciation of...
Grant’s been collecting contenders for 2009’s Word of the Year, including Dracula sneeze, Government Motors, and… unumbium? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dracula Sneeze” Martha, besides the word of the decade, it’s also time to...
Greg Pliska has a quiz about chemical names that should exist but don’t. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Word Quiz: Fake Chemical Elements from Words Ending in -ium” You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Martha Barnette. And...
