On our Facebook group, listeners are pondering whether there’s a word for buying an object and then using it for a completely different purpose — the treadmill that ends up as a clothes rack, for example. The Japanese expression mikka bozu, or...
Victoria in Madison, Wisconsin, is curious about saying something is a thing, meaning that a particular phenomenon exists or is genuine. This phrase has been around since at least the time of Jane Austen, who used it in Pride and Prejudice. Other...
Hey, podcast listener! Martha here with a special minicast of A Way with Words. Today I want to tell you a story — and make a request for you to support A Way with Words. The story is about a guy named Luigi. He was born in 1737 in Bologna, Italy...
A native English speaker who’s been studying Spanish for 11 years with her husband finds that learning a second language has an effect on her original tongue. She can’t spell as well as she used to, and sometimes finds herself reaching...
Steve in Neenah, Wisconsin, says he’d not heard the term suss out in a long time, but then suddenly he was hearing again it in several different places. What he’s experiencing is the frequency illusion, also known as the Baader-Meinhof...
Destiny from Huntington Beach, California, speaks German proficiently, plus some Spanish. She’s now learning Russian, but finds herself frustrated as she reaches instead for Spanish words for the same thing. This phenomenon is so common among...