Kristin, a college professor in Dubuque, Iowa, teaches a class in the U.S. history of sexuality. She’s intrigued by the way her students increasingly use the word loyalty as a synonym for monogamy. Perhaps the word monogamy sounds more...
In cycling, a Fred is a chubby poseur who’s bought a fancy bike and a fancier outfit but can’t even pedal up a hill. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Cycling Freds” Hi, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is...
What is a hipster? Is it an insult to call someone a hipster, even if they’re, well, a hipster? Do hipsters identify themselves as hipsters? Grant traces the label from 1960s counterculture to today’s skinny-jeaned Brooklyn paradox. This...
If you’re inappropriately focused on the minutiae of a project instead of the bigger picture, you’re said to be bike-shedding. Grant talks about that modern slang term and Martha discusses a word that goes way back in time, right back to...
David Pogue, technology columnist for The New York Times, grapples with a slang quiz. First he shares own his favorite slang term, nonversation, then tries to guess the meaning of the archaic technological slang terms planktonocrit, phenakistoscope...
This week’s “Slang This!” contestant is literary historian Jack Lynch, author of The Lexicographer’s Dilemma: The Evolution of ‘Proper’ English, from Shakespeare to South Park. He tries to guess the meaning of...