Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...
Barb in Boston, Massachusetts, once worked on Wall Street for a British bank that had an office that handled tizzy-hunting, devoted to uncovering scams and fraud. In A Dictionary of the Underworld (Bookshop|Amazon), slang lexicographer Eric...
Well, look what the cat dragged in! It’s another newsletter from A Way with Words. Given how often we talk about food words, we should write a cookbook. For example, this past weekend’s show was a leftover — a rebroadcast, a rerun, a re...
Hi, all — In this week’s archive edition, we discuss not-so-smartphones, “Erin” vs. “Aaron,” “who” vs. “whom,” what happens when you “overegg the pudding,” and what it means to...
gayby n.— «In 1994, Daddy Dave and Daddy Bob prepared 5-year-old Elizabeth Wall for the first day of kindergarten in New Jersey, meeting with the principal in advance to ease her transition as the daughter of two gay men. […] Wall...
wall-cross v.— «Wells Fargo wanted to be among one of the first banks to get to the market before fund managers and investors became overwhelmed by the supply of stock. Being first also carried the risk that the offering could be too big...