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 about this letter here. This is...
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. Transcript of “Zed, Not Z” Hello, you have A Way with...
Welcome to another edition of the A Way with Words newsletter. What was college slang like 100 years ago? That's what we talked about on the air this past weekend. We also talked about "go fly a kite," nicknames for Vancouver, and why...
Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words! This past weekend we celebrated National Grammar Day (again): We also discussed "booby trap," played a quiz based on "snowclones," and talked about the word "piker."...
Welcome to another newsletter from A Way with Words! This week's minicast, available only online, is about the Yiddish expression "hak mir nisht ken tshaynik." It's what you say to somebody who's annoying you with a lot of talk...
