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A Pick’ll Do

A pickle inspired this week’s puzzle from Quiz Guy John Chaneski. He was thinking about the fact that if you need something to help you strum a guitar, a “pickle do just fine,” the word pickle sounding, of course, like an...

Skylarking, a Joyful Messing Around

While vacationing on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast, a listener encountered an Australian who used the term skylarking to mean “horsing around.” The verb to skylark goes back hundreds of years and once referred to racing through the...

Episode 1502

Mimeographs and Dittos

How colors got their names, and a strange way to write. The terms blue and orange arrived in English via French, so why didn’t we also adapt the French for black and white? • Not every example of writing goes in one direction across the page...

Episode 1580

Beefed It

The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...

Sophocles’ Friends Word Quiz

Quiz Guy John Chaneski would like you to meet Greek friends’ friends, all of whose names follow the pronunciation pattern of their pals. For example, Sophocles would like you to meet his friend who’s an expert on cephalopods, such as squid...

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