Episode 100: How did we get here?
It’s our 100th episode, which seemed like a good occasion to answer a listener question of a more...
22:08
Do we repeat ourselves? Very well then, we repeat ourselves.
A listener questions a tautology in one of our definitions and starts us off on a discussion of...
13:48
Hackneyed Phrases, Both Old and New
Writing advice often includes hackneyed phrases we’re supposed to avoid. The phrases we're warned...
14:55
Tips for Frenchifying Your French
Whether you're hoping to improve your high school French or just order that croissant with more...
21:20
Eggcorns, Mondegreens, and Spoonerisms—Oh My!
A discussion of various kinds of slips of the tongue and errors of the ear. Hosted by Emily...
27:25
Traveling Words: Luggage, Baggage, and the Recombobulation Station
In the disconcerting event that your travels by air deliver you, but not what you've packed, to...
18:50
Sometimes a word, over time, will take on a meaning that doesn’t play very nicely with its...
20:35
We’ve discussed how words come to be entered in our dictionaries before, but today we’re going to...
25:38
Wordle Does Not Make Us Nauseous
Some listeners want to know if working with words professionally makes a dictionary editor...
17:39
The Invention of the Modern Dictionary
The earliest dictionaries were the fruit of one person’s labor, but the 1864 Webster's Unabridged...
33:40
An Interview with Jacques Bailly, Official Pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee
Jacques Bailly has been the official pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2003—23...
27:55
Nashe's 8 Types of Drunkards Includes No Octopi
An exploration of Thomas Nashe's use of animals as metaphors for those who imbibe heavily; And...
25:24
An exploration of spellings—like 'ect.' for 'etc.'—that reflect alternative pronunciations, and...
25:49
Corrections, Clarifications, and Grave Transgressions
A visit to the mailbag provides us with a sartorial use of ‘hipster,’ some schooling on 19th...
16:28
We all know how to find opposites by removing prefixes: 'unhappy' becomes 'happy'; 'disagree'...
16:40
George Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language'
George Orwell published his famous essay "Politics and the English Language" in 1946, and we...
28:42
English borrowed lots of words from French. And it liked some of those words so much it borrowed...
18:23
If brevity is the soul of wit, are abbreviations the language's best jokes? Hosted by Emily...
16:40
The History of 'Whistleblower'
Whistleblowers didn't always tell secrets and hipsters weren't always hip. This episode explains...
18:55
What does it mean to be 'at large'?
First, we'll look at how 'at large' came to be applied to editors, criminals, and sometimes the...
17:35
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