Mike from Irving, Texas, has a co-worker who regularly uses brung instead of brought. Is it okay to say “he brung something”? The word brung is a dialectal variant that has existed alongside brought for centuries. It appears in the...
What did Shakespeare’s plays sound like in his day? An acting teacher with an interest in dialects wants to know how researchers reconstruct Elizabethan speech. This is part of a complete episode.
coolio n.— «What the trucker cap and wallet chain were to hipsters of a moment ago, the Kramden is to what my colleague Mike Albo refers to as the “coolios” of now. Leading with a belly is a male privilege of long standing, of course, a...
zap n.— «Following the 1969 Stonewall riots, as the nascent gay rights movement became increasingly combative, a gay Philadelphia teenager initiated his own guerrilla war aimed at television, including the CBS Evening News. Mark Segal...
vermacular n.— «Thanks to the character-inspired icons for various Mac-related applications, there’s a new word-building form of entertainment to get bored workers through the doldrums of the day. Like a contemporary version of the grade...
mailbox money n.— «The recurring revenue SCR earns as a result of switching its clients to Mercury is what Milligan refers to as “mailbox money.” That is, once a client is switched over, SCR receives a monthly residual check...