How often do you hear the words campaign and political in the same breath? Oddly enough, 19th-century grammarians railed against using campaign to mean “an electoral contest.” Martha and Grant discuss why. And, lost in translation: a...
English speakers borrowed the German term Witzelsucht (or “joke addiction”) to mean “excessive punning and a compulsion to tell bad jokes.” While it might sound amusing to have a word for such behavior, the word refers...