To give someone a wide berth means to provide ample room. This phrase is nautical in origin, where it means “the distance ships give each other to avoid crashing.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “To Give a Wide...
At a Seattle, Washington, tech company, Vivian finds that she and her fellow employees are continually vexed by this question: Does bimonthly mean “once every two weeks” or “once every two months”? This is part of a complete...
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...
An editor with a large database company is tussling with colleagues over the proper use of the words comprise and composed of. She believes the correct usage would be: The alphabet comprises 26 letters or The alphabet is composed of 26 letters...
Jason from De Pere, Wisconsin, was surprised to see that among the spelling words his twin second-graders were studying was the contraction this’ll. Is a term like this’ll really appropriate for a second-grade spelling test? This is part...
Ben in Richmond, Virginia, is puzzled by the expression Believe you me. It sounds odd because it mixes up the usual subject-verb-object order in English. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Believe You Me” Hello, you have...