A California college student is campaigning for international scientific authorities to adopt the slang term hella as an official prefix indicating a huge number. Will he succeed? Also, how to pronounce niche, the regional terms doppick and nixie...
Here’s a variant of a phrase that’s familiar to many African-Americans, but virtually unknown to most others: “I’m so broke I couldn’t buy a louse a wrestling jacket.” What’s its meaning and origin...
Welcome to another newsletter from "A Way with Words"! Where the heck have we been? Working on a brand-new season, that's where. It starts this coming weekend. That's right--brand-new episodes, chock full of...
brouse n.— Note: A variant spelling of, and derived from, the verb “browse.” The Oxford English Dictionary has this term dated to 1552. «Hiram said the winter of 1833 was bad for working out so they didn’t get much of the...
rambler n.— «Last night we spent our first night in the house we’ll occupy for at least the next 12 months. In local parlance it’s a “rambler”—one floor, no basement, supposedly a scaled-down postwar variant of the ranch-style house...
Here’s another newsletter from A Way with Words. On this past weekend’s show we mused over the idea of reading books on electronic devices, talked about “tow-headed,” and got to the German origins of “going to Buxtehude...