A listener in Norwich, Connecticut, is going through a trove of love letters her parents sent each other during World War II. In one of them, her father repeatedly used the word hideous in an ironic way to mean “wonderful.” Is that part...
Writers and where they do their best creative work. A new book on Geoffrey Chaucer describes the dark, cramped, smelly room where he wrote his early work. Which raises the question: What kind of space do you need to produce your best writing...
Words like bae, bling bling and on fleek have all moved into the common vernacular at different points in the last 30 years, thanks in part to the prominence of African-American slang in music and pop culture. This is part of a complete episode...
Particularly in the African-American community, the affectionate term son is often used for more than just young male offspring—most anyone can be addressed as son. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Addressing as...
Do you pronounce crayon like crown? This common variation tends to be a Midlands pronunciation. Americans may pronounce this word several ways, as this dialect map shows. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Dialects of...
If something’s clean as a whistle, that doesn’t mean it’s shiny and spotless like a silver whistle in a referee’s mouth. The idiom refers to a whistling sound: That piercing noise is super-bright and finely edged on the ear...