This week on A Way with Words: Restaurant jargon, military slang, and modern Greek turns of phrase. • Some restaurants now advertise that they sell “clean” sandwiches. But that doesn’t mean they’re condiment-free or the...
Why don’t we pronounce the letter b in the word subtle? The word derives ultimately from Latin subtilis, meaning “fine, delicate,” and was adopted into Middle English from Old French as sotil. The b was later added back in so that...
A San Diego, California, listener bemoans the lack of a specific term for the person who is married to one’s brother or sister. The best we can do in English is brother-in-law or sister-in-law, but often that needs further clarification. This...
Martha shares a British article that begins, “Boffins have discovered a strange new type of spongy mushroom.” But what, you may ask, is a boffin? The word boffin denotes an intellectual with a specific expertise and general lack of...
citizen science n.— «The result is an impressively long-running example of “citizen science,” the term for projects in which amateurs gather field data for future research, making up in numbers what we lack in training and...
globster n.— «Many monster enthusiasts believe that huge, unidentified masses that occasionally wash up on beaches throughout the world are sea monsters. These finds, often called globsters, are obviously flesh, yet have decayed so badly...