A Way with Words
A Way with Words offers a humorous and instructional joy ride through the English language with authors and language experts Richard Lederer and Martha Barnette. Produced at KPBS in San Diego.
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English Down Under - 5 Jan. 2009
[This episode originally aired October 11, 2008.]This week, Martha and Grant discuss terms from Australia, including aerial ping-pong, pumpkin squatter, andâkangarooster? They explain the connection between stereotypes and stereos, and why we call the person clearing tables in a restaurant a busb …
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Automobile Words of the Year - 29 Dec. 2008
We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about words that came from the 2008 Beijing Olympics.Gas prices have been all over the place, but worse still than high gas-prices are accidents caused by DWT, which is short for 'driving while texting.'Legislati …
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Coinkydinks and Big Boxes - 29 Dec. 2008
[This episode first aired May 10, 2008.]We all misspeak from time to time, but how about when we mangle words on purpose? Do you ever say 'fambly' instead of family, 'perazackly' for exactly, or 'coinkydink' for coincidence? When Grant recently wrote a newspaper column about saying things wrong o …
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Cut to the Chase - 22 Dec. 2008
There's nothing like an oddly phrased headline to brighten your day. How about 'Actor Sent to Jail for Not Finishing Sentence'? Or 'Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped'? Same for signs that make you do a double take, like 'Senior Citizens! Buy One, Get One Free.' A San Diego caller shares a couple of h …
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The Lipstick Express - 15 Dec. 2008
Hockey mom, mavericky, snow machines, and--how could we forget that other memorable phrase from the 2008 presidential campaign on a pig. Some new and not-so-new terms leapt onto the national stage during Gov. Sarah Palin's run for the vice presidency. Grant discusses these expressions as our 'Word o …
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I Can Has Shimmery Eyez - 15 Dec. 2008
The death of Martha's favorite cat Typo prompts her to reminisce about him, and about one of her favorite ailurophilic words, chatoyant.My cat Typo was a gray tabby. Greenish-gold eyes, always getting into trouble. In fact, I'm sure that during his 17 years, he used up far more than 9 lives. As a ki …
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Almost Up to Possible - 15 Dec. 2008
We recommend books that make great gifts for language lovers, talk about footwear called go-aheads, and look further into going commando. Also, was the 2008 election a historic event or an historic event?The second edition of the Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus is chock-full of synonyms, of cours …
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PUMA (minicast) - 8 Dec. 2008
We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Last week we talked about "ground game."Another political term that we crossed paths with was PUMA. PUMA is an acronym for Party Unity My Ass, which began as a Facebook group.Members of that group were Democrats who were d …
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Never Bolt Your Door with A Boiled Carrot - 8 Dec. 2008
[This episode first aired October 4, 2008.]Proverbs pack great truths into a few well-chosen words, no matter which language you speak. Check out this one from Belize: 'Don't call the alligator a big-mouth till you have crossed the river.' And this truism from Zanzibar: 'When two elephants tussle …
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Ground Game (minicast) - 1 Dec. 2008
We're continuing our look at some of the words of the year of 2008. Being an election year, it generated a huge amount of political language. One expression that was not new, but which certainly seems to have exploded in use, was 'ground game.'Ground game is a political term that refers to the …
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Moonbats and Wingnuts - 1 Dec. 2008
[This episode first aired September 20, 2008.]Here's a bit of political slang now making the rounds: sleepover. No, we're not talking about another pol caught with his pants down. We're talking about spending the night with, well, a voting machine. In this week's episode, we examine this and other e …
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Dust Bunnies and Ghost Turds - 23 Nov. 2008
Feeling fankled? It's a Scots English word that means "messed up" or "confused." In this week's episode, Grant and Martha also discuss a whole litter of synonyms for "dust bunny," a slew of different terms for the piece of playground equipment you slide on, and the prop …
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Nuke the Fridge - 23 Nov. 2008
We kick off our series on contenders for 2008's "Word of the Year" with a look at "nuke the fridge."The American Dialect Society will hold the 19th annual "Word of the Year" vote in January. It's the granddaddy of all word of the year votes--the longest running, the mos …
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A Year of Words - 17 Nov. 2008
It's that time again, when people start thinking about a 'new or resurgent word or phrase that best captures the spirit of the past year.' And what a year! We heard the words 'bailout' and 'lipstick' more times than we'd ever dreamed, and saw also the rise of invented words like 'staycation' and 're …
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Of Gossamer and Geese (minicast) - 10 Nov. 2008
It's a warm day in late autumn. You're out for a stroll in the country. If the air is still, and the sun is at just the right angle, you may see the glint of spider threads floating lazily in the air. Particularly at this time of year, some tiny spiders use an odd way to travel: They shoot out threa …
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Pwned Prose, Stat! - 10 Nov. 2008
[This episode first aired September 13, 2008.]When you get to the end of a wonderful book, your first impulse is to tell someone else about it. In this week's episode, Martha and Grant discuss what they've been reading and the delights of great prose.An Illinois man recalls that as a kid, he used …
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Language Headlines (minicast) - 3 Nov. 2008
Last year British slang lexicographer Jonathon Green struck a deal with the publisher Chambers Harrap to create an exhaustive dictionary of English slang. Now, says the London Telegraph, the first fruit of that relationship has appeared in the form of the Chambers Slang Dictionary.The main sources o …
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Hair of the Politics that Bit You - 3 Nov. 2008
This week on 'A Way with Words': Feel like having a little 'hair of the dog'? Grant and Martha explain what dog hair has to do with hangover cures. And what do you call it when random objects form a recognizable image, like a cloud resembling a bunny, or the image of Elvis in a grilled cheese sandwi …
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Riddled Through With Riddles - 27 Oct. 2008
Here's a riddle: 'Nature requires five, custom gives seven, laziness takes nine, and wickedness eleven.' Think you know the answer? You'll find it in this week's episode, in which Grant and Martha discuss this and other old-fashioned riddles. Also: how did the phrase 'going commando' come to be slan …
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Darwinism and the Dictionary (minicast) - 20 Oct. 2008
The British publishers of the Collins dictionary have announced 24 words on their endangered species list. They're words like 'vilipend,' which means 'to treat with contempt,' and 'nitid,' that's n-i-t-i-d, which means 'glistening. ' The editors warn that if they don't see evidence of these words be …
A Way with Words
