A native Dutch speaker who spent many years in Japan says he had to learn the hard way that when Americans greeted him with How are you?, they didn’t really want to know how he was. Such casual greetings that don’t require a factual or...
Lana in Evansville, Indiana, says all the women in her family affectionately call each other Gert or Gertie. She has discovered that one of her friends also uses the name Gertie as a term of endearment for the women in her own family. Although in...
In another episode, we discussed the apparent lack of a single English word that means “give someone something to drink” in the same way that feed means to “give someone food to eat.” A listener points out that in Hebrew...
Mark in Bostonia, California, works in a machine shop where a sign warned: Beware of coolant and swarf. The word swarf refers to filings or dust created from machine work. Swarf can also function as a verb meaning “to cover with dust or grit...
A discussion on the English Language & Usage Stack Exchange about things that can still be useful even if they longer function properly, such as escalators and moving sidewalks, included several intriguing expressions involving partial failure...
Some proper names could also function as verbs. For starters, there’s Grant, Bob, Josh, Mark, Chip, and Sue. This is part of a complete episode.