A magnificent new book celebrates the richness and diversity of 450 years of written and spoken English in what is now the United States. It’s called The People’s Tongue, and it’s a sumptuous collection of essays, letters, poems...
A caller from Russia wonders about the English idiom can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. What’s so hard about walking and chewing gum? This is part of a complete episode.
The books we love as children may influence our careers more than we realize. As a child, Martha was fascinated with stories of cracking codes, and Grant loved books with glossaries–not that far from the kind of work they do today. A caller...
The saying “I don’t chew my cabbage twice,” means I’m not going to repeat myself. The ancient Romans, by the way, ate cabbage as a protection against hangovers, but detested the smell of twice-cooked cabbage. This is part of...
Grant quizzes Martha about the meaning of several rhyming verb and noun phrases: cuff and stuff, the cherries and blueberries, chew and screw, eat it and beat it, and flap and zap. This is part of a complete episode.