Liam from San Francisco, California, is wondering about woo-woo. How did this term come to be an adjective describing beliefs or practices considered unscientific or irrational? Woo-woo likely imitates otherworldly sounds or ghostly moans. This is part of a complete episode.
In Hong Kong English, Add oil! means something like “Go on!” or “Go for it!” A recent addition to the Oxford English Dictionary, this expression of encouragement comes from Cantonese (加油 or gā yáu; rendered as jiāyóu from Mandarin) and draws on the...
A Green Bay Packers fan wonders why a quarterback who’s tackled is said to be sacked. The roots of the word sack as in “bag” goes back thousands of years, all the way to Akkadian, later spreading through Greek, Latin, and then to Romance and...
