Ever wonder what medieval England looked and sounded like? In Old English, the word hord meant “treasure” and your wordhord was the treasure of words locked up inside you. A delightful new book uses the language of that period to create...
You look like the hind wheels of destruction means “You look terrible!” An earlier version is the hind wheels of bad luck. This is part of a complete episode.
Ian in Clyde, North Carolina, is puzzled when a colleague uses the term blue million, meaning “a large amount.” Along with words like zillion and gazillion, this expression functions as an indefinite hyperbolic numeral. Sometimes the...
Kelly from Cincinnati, Ohio, says her father uses the word gradooto mean “clutter” or “a bit of litter.” Also spelled gradu or gradeau, our listeners report using this word in a variety of ways, to mean “gunk,”...
“The Die is Cast” is the title of an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. A listener and his wife disagree about what kind of “die” is meant here. It’s not a reference to metallurgy– it’s a quotation...
bad adj.— «Emprunté à l’anglais, le mot “bad” ne veut pas dire “mauvais,” mais son contraire “bon”—preuve que le jeu est bien de brouiller les pistes.» —“Vivre avec 400...