Do you have a favorite word? Martha’s is mellifluous, which means pleasing to the ear, but goes back to the idea of flowing with honey. If you have a favorite word, take a picture of yourself holding it up and send it in to our Word Wall! This...
David, a lawyer from Cape Cod, Massachusetts, subscribes to the Lexis Legal News Brief, and wonders about the connection between lex meaning “law,” and the lex which refers to “words.” While lexis refers to the total stock of...
Stet is the editor’s way of saying, “Let it stand.” Adrienne in Plattsburgh, New York, found it in crossword puzzles. On paper, it’s a practical mark: after a deletion or correction has been proposed, stet tells the typesetter or editor to leave the...
A question from a listener on the A Way with Words Facebook page has Martha musing about the entomological and etymological connections between the word pupil and the pupal stage of an insect’s life.
What’s the origin of word and word up? A theory in Geneva Smitherman’s Black Talk suggests they descend from the African American proverb your word is your bond, popularized in the 1960s by a splinter group from the Nation of Islam. Along the way...
Books for language lovers include Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Guy Deutscher’s lay-friendly tour of research on language and thought, and OK: The Improbable Story of America’s Greatest Word, Allan...