off-cube adj.— «In the end they went with the BBC’s ball-by-ball feed on Radio 2000, despite having local commentators on standby to commentate off television at the SABC’s Auckland Park studios. The practice—known as “off cube”...
Peggy Lee moment v. phr.— «Now we have the “Peggy Lee Moment.” I heard a reference to this last week on one of those television stations that feature a bunch of guys screaming at each other, and liked it so much I decided to...
What do we call it when new inventions or ideas change the name of something old? It used to be that the word guitar was sufficient, but now we regularly distinguish between an acoustic guitar and an electric guitar. Same for television, a word that...
Salut, superfriends! It's another newsletter from A Way with Words. This week's episode was a re-run, one that we particularly liked because it has the famed "dinner vs. supper" call, which is still generating buckets of mail...
Quiz Guy John Chaneski tries to stump the hosts with a puzzle called Cryptic Crosswords. How about this one: “Do-re-mi-fa follower + sneaker feature = comfort.” This is part of a complete episode.
Quiz Guy John Chaneski presents a word puzzle about snowclones, linguists’ joking term for twists on formulaic expressions. This is part of a complete episode.