What’s the most effective way to respond to someone who keeps apologizing for the same offense? Say, for example, that a co-worker is habitually late to work, and is forever apologizing for it, but does nothing to change that behavior? How do...
Even though blogs can’t read and newspapers can’t speak, it’s totally appropriate to write “the blog reads,” or “the newspaper says.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “The Blog...
“Do the needful” is a phrase commonly heard from people in India working in tech support. Though it’s fallen out of fashion in British dialects, it’s still common in India to mean “do what you must.” This is part...
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...
Josh in Dallas wondered whether pussyfooting is offensive after a colleague objected to it at work. The word isn’t inherently vulgar or sexist. It comes from pussycat and the image of a cat stepping softly. Since the 1890s, pussyfoot has meant to...