Do you pour over a document or pore over a document? Although it’s tempting to assume that the phrase alludes to pouring one’s attention all over something (as if your vision was a substance), the correct word is pore, a term that since...
Hey, podcast listener! Martha here with a special minicast of A Way with Words. Today I want to tell you a story — and make a request for you to support A Way with Words. The story is about a guy named Luigi. He was born in 1737 in Bologna, Italy...
The intentional misspelling of business names to attract attention is sometimes known as sensational spelling or divergent spelling. This is part of a complete episode.
A woman who grew up in Albuquerque recalls that when one of her schoolmates got in trouble, she and their peers would say ominously, “Umbers!” This slang term is apparently a hyperlocal version of similarly elongated exclamations like...
Glyn Maxwell, in a recent review of the book Ideas of Order: A Close Reading of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, argues that reading the sonnets altogether in a collection is a little strange, since many of them are worth more attention than...
Whistle britches, a Southern term for fellows who draw a lot of attention to themselves, comes from the sound corduroy trousers make when you walk and the wales rub against each other. This is part of a complete episode.