With your support, 2021 will be a pivotal year for A Way with Words. With your help, and by tightening our budget, through 2019 and 2020, we’ve managed to weather the pandemic while still increasing listenership both on the radio and by...
While on a road trip, a listener caught herself using the expression beat-feeting, as in We were beat-feeting it to New York and back. Might it have to do with the mode of transportation in the old Flintstones cartoon? This is part of a complete...
How do actors bring Shakespeare’s lines to life so that modern audiences immediately understand the text? One way is to emphasize the names of people and places at certain points. That technique is called billboarding. And: Anyone for an...
When David from Warren County, Indiana, visited relatives in Virginia, he heard about an inebriated man who was said to have entered a church and caused a ruckus while sworpin’ down the aisle. In Appalachia, the verb sworp, also spelled swarp...
Eleven-year-old Josiah from San Antonio, Texas, is looking for a single English word to describe a road that’s largely free of traffic. This is part of a complete episode.
Perfect sentences and slang that tickles your mind! A new book of writing advice says a good sentence “imposes a logic on the world’s weirdness” and pares away options for meaning, word by word. • Your musician friend may refer to...