Marie-Claire from Montreal, Canada, wonders why we say that someone living in carefree luxury is living the life of Riley. No one’s sure this expression’s origin, although it may be associated with a 19th-century vaudeville song about an...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski’s puzzle features intentional misunderstandings of the names of familiar movies and TV shows. For example, if John refers to a creepy Netflix show set in the 1980s called More Unusual Objects, what’s the program he...
A Los Angeles, California, man says his mother studiously avoided swearing. Instead of a curse word, she substituted the word piffle, which was often even more effective than a four-letter word because it was so unexpected. Piffle is most likely...
The first-ever “Word by Word” awards were presented by A Way With Words co-hosts Martha Barnette and Grant Barrett as part of a sold-out celebration at the San Diego Natural History Museum. To celebrate its tenth year of independent production...
Help support A Way with Words broadcasts and podcasts by making a donation now. Dear friends, Last week we sent out a simple survey to tens of thousands of A Way with Words listeners and fans. Our goal: to find out your consensus on the state of the...
Since Adobe released the photo-editing program Photoshop in 1988, to photoshop has become a common verb, which got shortened to just shop. Now people are using the hashtag lazyshop, where you just describe the changes you would have made to a photo...