A Way with Words | philosophy

Someone Who is Always to Blame

Posted by Grant Barrett on November 14, 2020 · Add Comment

Deviled Eggs (episode #1554)

Posted by Grant Barrett on September 14, 2020 · Add Comment

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Play It by Ear (episode #1553)

Posted by Grant Barrett on August 31, 2020 · Add Comment

How does social context shape our perception of language? When hiking the Appalachian Trail, a young woman from Wyoming found that fellow hikers assumed she was from another country, not only because of how she spoke, but also how she looked. Sometimes our perception of other people’s accents have more to do with social context [...]
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Black-Hearted Buzzard

Posted by Grant Barrett on August 15, 2020 · Add Comment

Patricia in Midland, Georgia, says her mother always used the phrase black-hearted buzzard to denote someone who was evil or otherwise up to no good. Do other people use that expression? This is part of a complete episode.
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Shakespeare’s Latin Education

Posted by Grant Barrett on June 6, 2020 · Add Comment

In How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, Scott Newstok, a professor at Rhodes College, points out that William Shakespeare never had what we might think of as an “English class.” Instead, he was taught rhetoric, disputation, critical thinking, and more — all in Latin. Newstok says that creative thinking is a [...]
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Bovine, Pavonine, and Other Animal Adjectives

Posted by Grant Barrett on April 18, 2020 · Add Comment

Lisa calls from Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, to ask about adjectives involving various kinds of animals. She knows that pavonine describes something having to do with peacocks, bovine involves cows, anserine refers to geese, and lupine has to do with wolves. But there are many more such collateral adjectives, such as hippotigrine, which describes something involving zebras, [...]
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