The 5-Minute Linguist is a book of short, accessible essays by linguists who answer the questions they commonly hear from laypersons. For example, what’s the difference between a language and a dialect? What causes someone to have a foreign accent? The book is based on an annual competition held by the Linguistic Society of America. This is part of a complete episode.
The Spanish idiom del año del caldo describes something exceedingly old. Literally translating as “from the year of the broth,”...
Mark in Scranton, Pennsylvania, calls about a phrase he heard on an old detective show: drop a dime. It means “to inform on...
In the 1940s, the slang phrase You shred it, wheat! was used to express complete agreement with something, a punning variation of You said...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski has clues to several rhyming pairs of words separated by the word and. For example, what do you call the technique...
Lorelei from Wakefield, Virginia, learned the word nonce from the Spelling Bee game in The New York Times. When she looked up the...
After our conversation about blessing boxes, those little free pantries stocked with donated food, a listener points out the use of love...
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