A woman in Middlesex, Vermont, says that when she was a girl her parents sometimes described her as porky, but they weren’t referring to her appearance — they meant she was acting rebelliously. This use of the word might be related to pawky...
Card games often go by several different names, like Canfield and Nertz, or Egyptian Racehorse and Egyptian Rat Screw, or B.S. and Bible Study. These names, and the rules for each, vary because they’re more often passed from person to person...
A native French speaker wants clarification about the use of the word precipice in English. This is part of a complete episode.
Today’s pet peeve is often tomorrow’s standard usage. Nineteenth-century grammarians railed against the use of the word campaign to denote an electoral contest, arguing it was an inappropriate use of a military term. C.W. Bardeen’s...
The organization Historic Hudson Valley describes the African-American celebration of Pinkster in an exemplary way. It avoids the use of the word slave and instead uses terms such as enslaved people, enslaved Africans, and captives. It’s a...
Are your nightstand books all over the place? Why not stack ’em into a bookmash? A bookmash is a kind of found poetry formed from book titles! And we all know that honesty is the best policy. But does that mean you should correct the grammar of your...