Snowboarders flailing their arms in the air might be the last folks who still wind down the windows. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Winding Down the Windows” I picked up a phrase from the snowboarding competition at...
The idiom by and large, an idiom commonly known to mean “in general,” actually combines two sailing terms. To sail by means you’re sailing into the wind. To sail large, means that you have the wind more or less at your back...
Dude! We’re used to hearing the word “dude” applied to guys. But increasingly, young women use the word “dude” to address each other. Grant and Martha talk about linguistic research about the meaning and uses of...
What the fox says may be a mystery, but we do know that dogs bark differently around the world. In China, for example, they say not bow-wow but wang wang. Also, the story behind the British tradition of scrumping. It’s not a middle school...
“Empty heads make weary bones,” so don’t forget what you went looking for or you’ll wind up exhausted for no reason! This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Empty Heads” Hello, you have A Way with Words...
The exclamation Fiddlesticks!, meaning “a trifle” or “something insignificant or absurd,” goes back to the time of Shakespeare. It endures in part because it’s fun to say. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript...