Why is it that what you say to your family and what they hear are different? If you say “no,” your child hears “maybe,” and if you say “maybe,” she hears “ask again and again,” and “yes” is just around the corner.” Grant and Martha discuss ways that...
If you appropriate something that no one else seems to be using, you may be said to kipe that object. A Wisconsin caller remembers kiping things as a youngster, like a neighbor’s leftover wood to build a fort. Grant discusses this regionalism and...
How are things in your “neck of the woods”? And why heck do we say neck? This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Neck of the Woods” Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Stacy from Boulder, Colorado. Well, hello Stacy, what’s...
bring the wood v. phr.— «“They need to see you punish guys,” he said. Hawkins has “brought the wood,” as he calls it, to several players. Good players, too. He booted junior linebacker Jake Duren after his arrest for smashing a car window. He...
soft-story adj.— «City officials have decided to speed an analysis of what to do about so-called soft-story buildings because the wood-frame structures are ubiquitous in San Francisco – possibly numbering in the tens of thousands – and probably...
Biltmore stick n.— «He wore a backpack with a G.P.S. receiver and carried, in one hand, a data collection unit resembling a portable credit card machine, and in the other, a strip of wood known as a Biltmore stick.…The Biltmore stick, for example...
