Colin in West Hartford, Connecticut, says his teenagers admiringly use the word dirty to describe a great athlete, and use filthy to describe one who’s especially talented. Although this positive usage of originally negative words may sound new, both words have been used as intensifiers for well over 100 years. This is part of a complete episode.
Good Vibrations (episode #1556) 10/26/2020: Asthenosphere, a geologist's term for the molten layer beneath the earth's crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the... [more]
Mystery Drawer (episode #1555) 10/12/2020: Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment:... [more]
Deviled Eggs (episode #1554) 09/14/2020:
Some TV commercials launch catchphrases that stick around long after the original ads. The exclamation Good stuff, Maynard! is still a compliment almost 40 years... [more]
Play It by Ear (episode #1553) 08/31/2020: How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she... [more]
Moon Palace (episode #1552) 08/17/2020: What happens in a classroom of refugee and immigrant youngsters learning English? Their fresh approach to language can result in remarkable poetry — some of... [more]
You must log in to post a comment.