What would you serve a plumber who comes over for dinner? How about … leeks? The hosts play a word game called "What Would You Serve?" Also, can you correct someone's grammar without ruining a new relationship? And is there an easy way to remember the difference between who and whom?
This episode first aired January 15, 2011. Listen here:
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What would you serve a plumber for dinner? How about leeks? (We didn't say it had to be appetizing.) What would you serve a jeweler? Carats. Martha and Grant play the "What Would You Serve?" game.
A Little Rock, Arkansas, caller has been going out with a Chinese woman. Her English is pretty good, but he wonders about the most polite way to correct a minor grammar mistake without ruining a new relationship.
What's the origin of the expressions "word!" and "word up!"? Grant shares a theory from the book Black Talk by Geneva Smitherman. Here's that Eighties-era song "Word Up."
What would you serve a chronic procrastinator? Ketchup. What would you serve a fertility specialist? Eggplant. Martha serves up those and others.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has a limerick new quiz.
A woman in Gainesville, Florida, says her father and his partner have an ongoing Scrabble feud over rebeheaded. Is it a word?
"Anymore, I play golf instead of tennis." Grant explains that this grammatical construction is known as the "positive anymore."
What would you serve to people separated by six degrees? Bacon!
A sign-language interpreter found herself translating the word doldrums. She wonders if it has to do the area of the ocean known by that name.
What would you serve a group of musicians and cardiologists? How about beets?
Martha shares some collective nouns sent in by listeners in response to a recent episode on the topic.
What does nonplussed mean, exactly? Does it mean "unflappable" or "at a loss." Martha and Grant disagree about its use.
Is there some kind of snappy jingle for knowing when to use who and whom?
Grant shares some familiar proverbs that supposedly arose from African-American English. The book he mentions is Dictionary of American Proverbs, by Wolfgang Mieder.
Need a word for "lover of the underdog"? It's infracaninophile.
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