A Fort Worth listener wonders about a claim she saw in a 1930s magazine. The article said that traditionally, a picket line was an area between the front lines of two opposing armies where soldiers might safely venture out to pick berries without fear of being attacked. Might that be connected to the modern sense of picket line meaning a group of striking workers or protesters? This is part of a complete episode.
The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary recently added several Irish English terms. One of them is segotia, which means “friend...
Lily in Iowa City, Iowa, says she and her roommate differ about how to pronounce the word hammock. Is it HAM-mock or HAM-mick? This is part...
Chris in Northampton, Massachusetts, and his mother are debating whether you can refer to your dog as somebody? Is it reasonable to say...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle is about animal anatomy, specifically nouns and adjectives formed by combining the name of an animal...
Was English spelling standardized before the advent of the printing press? No, but there were some significant periods in history where...
The Irish English word bockety describes someone who has difficulty walking, or something that’s fallen into a state of disrepair, as...
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