The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...
Matt, a new college grad in Austin, Texas, wants guidance about what kinds of things are appropriate to share during conversations in the workplace. Sociolinguist Janet Holmes has extensively researched and written about this topic, including in...
Columnist Lucy Kellaway wrote in the Financial Times about feeling less anxious and fearful in the workplace as she gets older. She concluded that such feelings are bog standard, a British expression meaning “common” or “widespread...
Is there a word you keep having to look up in the dictionary, no matter how many times you’ve looked it up before? Maybe it’s time for a mnemonic device. And: a listener shares a letter from Kurt Vonnegut himself, with some reassuring...
Step right up! It's another newsletter from "A Way with Words." This week we talked about unusual ways foreigners learn English, "play golf" vs. "go golfing," lie vs. lay, similes, "yo!," "neck of the...
call centre couple n.— «The Call Centre Couple, will transform India’s family structure, markets and workplace as we know them today. Why is this Call Centre Couple (CCC) the symbol of the NMC and how will they influence markets, work and...