Chris from Columbus, Wisconsin, wonders why English says bought rather than the regularized buyed for the past tense of buy. The form belongs to a small set of high-frequency verbs whose older patterns survived while many other verbs shifted toward...
A listener in Fargo, North Dakota, ask which is correct: graduated from high school or graduated high school? Increasingly, the former is falling by the wayside. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Graduate School vs. Graduate...
For a taste of what it’s like to spend a semester studying writing with a renowned author, check out Alexander Chee’s essay in The Morning News, “Annie Dillard and the Writing Life.” Dillard’s remarkable description of...
The verb to chork means to make the sound your feet make when your shoes are full of water, such as after misjudging a puddle. The word has been recorded since at least 1721 in a Scottish writer’s description of wet feet after wading through glens...
To be tuckered out, or tired, is thought to derive from the image of a starved quadruped that’s so skinny and worn out that it has a “tucked” appearance just behind the ribs. It may have been influenced by an older verb tuck...
A theater professor who has cast many students in productions wonders about the past tense of the verb to cast. Is it cast or casted? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “”To Cast” Past Tense: Cast or Casted?”...
