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“A few pickles short of a jar,” “a few peas short of a casserole,” “two French fries short of a Happy Meal”—this week, Martha and Grant discuss these and other full-deckisms, those clever ways to describe someone...
Should the sign on the boys’ bathroom at a school read “Boy’s Room” or “Boys’ Room”? The hosts clarify where to put the apostrophe. This is part of a complete episode.
Some business owners give their establishments names like “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe.” What most people don’t realize is that the letter Y in this case is a vestige of a letter we no longer use, and has a “th” sound. More...
A Tallahassee caller wonders about the name for terms that are capitalized in the middle, like MasterCard and FedEx. Grant explains that they’re commonly called CamelCase, not to be confused with Studly Caps. This is part of a complete episode.
In Britain, Canada, and some other English-speaking countries, the last letter of the alphabet is not zee, but zed. A caller who grew up in Guyana wonders why. This is part of a complete episode.
This week’s language headlines include the publication of new slang dictionary, and an entire book devoted to that tiny piece of punctuation, the period, and a tip-off about audio recordings of famous authors whose voices would otherwise be...