Mary in Alexandria, Virginia, wonders when words like senior and senior citizen came to mean “elderly.” Senior comes from Latin senex, “old,” the source also of Senate and senile. In the 1930s, a politician helped popularize...
Jeepers creepers! Pass the gleepers! Mary in Albuquerque, New Mexico, wonders if anyone else uses the term gleepers to mean “a pair of tongs.” Gleepers may be just her own family’s term. Some people refer to them as clackers...
She sells seashells by the seashore. Who is the she in this tongue twister? Some claim it’s the young Mary Anning, who went on to become a famous 19th-century British paleontologist. Dubious perhaps, but the story of her rise from seaside...
She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are seashells I’m sure, so if she sells seashells on the seashore, then I’m sure she sells seashore shells. Some claim that this tongue twister is about the early life of 19th...
Mary Gordon in Austin, Texas, shares a delightful story about her elderly father and a handful of vegetables, which raises the question: what’s the plural of squash? Squashes? Or squash? This is part of a complete episode.
Martha recommends Greek to Me: Adventures of the Comma Queen, a deeply personal, exuberant account of falling in love with both ancient and modern Greek by Mary Norris, former copy editor for The New Yorker. Norris shares several intriguing modern...