Abishek in Gaffney, South Carolina, found himself using the word Tetrising to refer to trying to pack a lot of small items into a moving van, based on the video game Tetris, in which players try to make various combinations of squares all fit...
A listener asks whether English has a word for buying something and then using it for a lesser or unintended purpose, such as turning a treadmill into a clothes rack. There may not be a single English term for that, but the Japanese expression mikka...
Brian from Washington, D.C., wonders about the term proc. It’s used by video-game enthusiasts to refer to an event triggered by particular circumstances or actions. Proc can also be used as a verb, and apparently derives from spec_proc, a...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle is about common bonds among seemingly unrelated words. For example, name the one word that unites the following three items: report card, USDA inspected beef, incline. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
Book recommendation time! Martha’s reading Dictionary Stories by Jez Burrows, short stories based on example sentences from dictionaries, and Grant recommends Julia Durango’s The Leveler, a techno-thriller for teens about virtual worlds. This is...
Retcon, short for retroactive continuity, is the phenomenon commonly used in video games, comic books, and soap operas where something from a past plotline is changed in order for what’s happening in the present to make sense. Also along those lines...