Did we stop referring to young urban professionals as yuppies? A listener in Madison, Wisconsin, says his younger co-workers told him they’d never heard of the word. The use of the word yuppie peaked around 1990, and has dramatically dropped ever since. Hippie, on the other hand, arose in the 1940s, then peaked around 1970, but had a resurgence in 2013 before starting to decline again. 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...
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