When Ana first arrived in the United States from Hungary, she was taken aback when someone greeted her with the idiomatic expression How’s it hanging?. She was also puzzled by the expression trim the tree meaning to “adorn a Christmas tree with decorations.” Trim in this sense reflects the word’s much earlier sense, meaning “to prepare” something. If you trim the sail on a boat, for example, you adjust it to prepare it for new conditions. If you’re in good trim you’re in good physical condition, and an ideal military force will be in fighting trim. The word trim is a contranym, meaning it can have one of two opposite meanings, namely, “to subtract from” or “to add to.” Cleave and dust are two other examples of contranyms. This is part of a complete episode.
According to Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English (Bookshop|Amazon) by Ben Yagoda, the word smarmy, meaning “unctuous” or “ingratiating,” may come from a 19th-century magazine contest, in which readers sent in...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...
Subscribe to the fantastic A Way with Words newsletter!
Martha and Grant send occasional messages with language headlines, event announcements, linguistic tidbits, and episode reminders. It’s a great way to stay in touch with what’s happening with the show.
