"Odious" has nothing to do with smell, and "noisome" has nothing to do with noise.
Are you surprised?
I have more commonly confused "smell" words in today's podcast, including "odorous," "malodorous," and "odoriferous."
WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu8ydXjUvPc
READ […]
Have you ever stared at "principal/principle" and thought, "Wait, which one?"
The old trick—"the principal is your pal"—is just the beginning. That P-A-L spelling has a surprising number of meanings: the lead actor, a CEO, the main part of a loan, and more.
The princiPLE spelling is simpler: a […]
Close-up promotional graphic for the Grammar Girl podcast featuring the host smiling against a bright orange patterned background. Large teal and white text reads “GRAMMAR GIRL,” with smaller text “with Mignon Fogarty” and episode number “1170.” A teal banner at the bottom announces: “NEW EPISODE: Feghoots. Mental Dictionary.” The QDT logo appears in the lower right corner.
Have you ever groaned at an elaborate pun? It might have been a *feghoot*!
The term comes from a 1956 sci-fi series about time-traveling troubleshooter Ferdinand Feghoot, whose adventures always ended in cringey puns.
This episode is guaranteed to make you laugh […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
YouTube thumbnail for "Grammar Girl" titled "A TALE OF TWO DICTIONARIES." A man and woman stand against a background of dictionary pages, gesturing toward floating books. The "QDT" logo is in the corner, and the main title is centered in a bold orange banner.
In today's show, Peter Sokolowski traces the word "dictionary" back to a 16th-century Latin work by a monk named Calepino. We look at how this original source led to the first monolingual dictionaries in both English and French, all within a year of each other […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Promotional graphic with a black-and-gold awards-show background filled with sparkles and spotlights. Large text reads "Is Academy Awards Singular?" An orange banner across the lower left says "SINGULAR?" A shiny gold award statue stands near the center, and a smiling dark-haired woman fills the right side. A red circle in the upper left says "QDT," the upper right says "GRAMMAR GIRL," and the bottom shows the "macmillan podcasts" logo.
Have you ever seen people use "Academy Awards" as though it were singular?
Jim Norrena did and wondered whether it's always wrong. Hear what he found in today's Grammar Girl podcast!
WATCH: https://youtu.be/ZM9oS-hAtjg
READ […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
This is actually a particularly good episode to watch on YouTube because we talk about the DARE maps and why they're shaped so weird.
WATCH: youtu.be/F6dYztdHnG8?...
READ: grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/116...
LISTEN: pod.link/173429229
#GrammarGirl #podcast
(I call them both a spatula.)
Rubber or silicone spatula and slotted turner side by side under the heading “What Do You Call These?” with “VS” between them.
Some people call these the same thing, and other people have different names for them — and it can depend on where you live!
That's just one of the cool things you'll learn this week from my chat with Joan Houston Hall, former editor of the Dictionary of American […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Podcast promo graphic reading “Why do teens say ‘be like?’” with two women’s portraits and the Grammar Girl logo.
Teens aren't destroying language. They're playing with it!
I talked with Sali Tagliamonte, a "language detective" who's studied teen talk for years. She busts myths about texting, explains why "like" dominates, why "very" is back, and shares her linguistic […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Square promotional graphic for the *Grammar Girl* podcast. An olive-green background with bold orange squiggle accents features large white text reading “LISTEN NOW!” A smiling woman with straight auburn hair appears on the right. Smaller text reads “Episode 1160.” At the bottom, an orange banner says: “Battle of the Moguls: ‘Awhile’ versus ‘A While.’ Crittador.” The *Grammar Girl* logo appears at the top.
Are you ever confused about "awhile" versus "a while"? Here's how I remember the difference:
"A while" (two words) is a noun phrase, so test whether you can use a different noun:
✅ It's been A WHILE = It's been A YEAR
"Awhile" (one word) is an adverb, so test […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Plus, we talked about tokens versus words, semicolons, and more.
Check it out:
WATCH: youtu.be/DXjxrXTEH5w
READ: grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/115...
LISTEN: pod.link/173429229
#GrammarGirl #podcast
@grammargirl's interview with Doug Harper of etymonline.com is well worth a listen;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nswr96XGt7k
They talk briefly about the origins of the site. Where Harper mentions how much easier it was to establish a website as a landmark when the web was new, and how […]
Promotional graphic for the Grammar Girl podcast featuring Mignon Fogarty and guest Peter Sokolowski. The title reads, “Do print dictionaries still matter?” A red Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary appears between them, set against a green background of bookshelves. The top includes icons for Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and QDT.
Merriam-Webster just released the first new print edition of its Collegiate Dictionary in 22 years — and it weighs five pounds! So of course, I had questions. :)
In today's podcast, I talk with Peter Sokolowski about why print still matters.
Watch […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Thumbnail for Grammar Girl podcast episode titled 'Antedating Words with Ben Zimmer.' Features the female host with long brown hair on the left pointing at the words and guest Ben Zimmer with dark hair and a short beard and mustasch on the right against a green background, with a retro-futuristic blue time machine illustration in the center featuring a clock face and antenna.
This week, I talked with the always delightful @bgzimmer about the linguistic detective work of antedating words — finding earlier usages than those published in dictionaries.
Learn about the surprising origins of "Ms.," "scallywag," and the baseball history of […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
#GrammarGirl perfectly describes prescriptivism vs. descriptivism 😆 #amediting #grammar
Danny Bate is full of fascinating alphabet facts from his book "Why Q Needs U" in this week's Grammar Girl podcast!
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6r9mTl48f0
Read: grammar-girl.simplecast.com/episodes/danny-bate/tran...
Listen: pod.link/173429229
#GrammarGirl #podcast
Promotional graphic for a Grammar Girl interview featuring Mignon Fogarty and Danny Bate. The background is green with light outlines of hieroglyphic symbols. The text reads: “INTERVIEW” at the top left in an orange banner and “Why Q needs U and how hieroglyphics created our alphabet” in large orange and white letters across the center. On the bottom left is Mignon Fogarty smiling, labeled “GRAMMAR Girl®,” and on the right is Danny Bate holding his book Why Q Needs U, labeled “DANNY BATE.” The QDT logo appears in the top right corner.
Listen to my chat with Danny Bate and dazzle your friends with alphabet trivia this weekend. :)
Here's a teaser:
The word "alphabet" literally means "ox house." It comes from the ancient letter names — "alp" (ox) and "bet" (house) — that come from the hieroglyphs […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Syntax analysis of
“living room furniture”
🔽
Normally, “living room” modifies “furniture”. But in some cases “living” modifies “room furniture”.
It's always good to acquire nice {living {room furniture} }, isn't it?
.
.
.
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#grammargirl #gaybdsm #gaykink
A promotional image for the Grammar Girl podcast featuring Mignon Fogarty and Stefan Fatsis. Mignon Fogarty, a white woman with long brown hair, is smiling on the left. Stefan Fatsis, a white man with gray hair and glasses, is resting his chin on his hand on the right. Between them is a graphic of the cover of his book, "Unabridged: The Story of the Dictionary and How It Came to Be." The background is bright orange, and the title in large text reads: "INTERVIEW The fight for the modern dictionary." The Grammar Girl and QDT logos are also visible.
If you love dictionaries, you'll love my chat this week with Stefan Fatsis about his new book "Unabridged."
He spent years at Merriam-Webster learning how everything works, even writing definitions that made it into the dictionary.
We talked about all kinds of […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Jess Zafarris explains how the name Pakistan was created by Muslim students at Cambridge in the 1930s who combined the names of the regions that ended up forming the country.
Listen to the whole interview →https://pod.link/173429229
Get the book, "Useless […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
You'll probably be as surprised as I was to learn that "outrage" doesn't actually come from "out" + "rage." Jess Zafarris explains what the heck is going on!
If you find this as fascinating as I do, listen to the whole interview and get her new book, "Useless […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Dazzle your friends this weekend with fabulous tidbits from Jess Zafarris!
This week, we ran through some of our favorite stories from her new book, "Useless Etymology."
— “Debunk” comes from Buncombe County in North Carolina, where a politician gave a famously […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
A promotional image for a Grammar Girl interview titled "Adapting a classic: from words to watercolors." It shows a smiling Mignon Fogarty (Grammar Girl) on the left and K. Woodman-Maynard, the graphic novelist, on the right. Between them is an image of the book cover for "Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting: The Graphic Novel" illustrated by K. Woodman-Maynard. The background features watercolor illustrations of a house and fields.
This week, I talk with illustrator and cartoonist K. Woodman Maynard about her new graphic novel adaptation of "Tuck Everlasting."
She shares how she adapted this beloved book, including how she used visual elements like speech bubbles, color, and panel frames to […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Graphic with a bright blue starburst background. In the center, two overlapping rounded rectangles display the main text: the top white rectangle says "Did He" in dark green, and the bottom gold rectangle says "Mean It?" in bold dark green. Below, smaller white text reads: "Kurt Vonnegut said to never use a semicolon, but did he actually mean it?"
Have you heard the Vonnegut quote about not using semicolons? That using one does nothing but show you've been to college?
That statement has always bugged me, so I looked into it and found a lot more in the article where it appears.
For example, he used a […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
If you've been putting off starting a newsletter (or have one and want to up your game), you'll love this week's episode because it is PACKED with author newsletter tips from the wonderful @janefriedman.com!
Watch: https://youtu.be/ZLDR6tiA2H8
Listen […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
English doesn’t have a handy word for “how manyth” — but Dutch and a bunch of other languages do.
In Dutch you can ask, “How manyth time were you late this week?” and the answer can be simply “the third.”
In this week’s #GrammarGirl episode, translator Heddwen […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Promotional graphic for Grammar Girl Podcast episode 1107. The top of the image features large orange text reading 'NEW EPISODE NEW EPISODE' with a torn-paper effect separating it from the main photo. In the center, a smiling woman with long brown hair wears large headphones, sitting in front of a blurred bookshelf background. A green label in the middle reads 'Episode 1107.' Below, orange text says: 'Double possessives. Words that do double duty. The monkeys aren’t working.' In the bottom right corner is the QDT logo, and in the top left is a circular orange emblem with a microphone icon reading 'New Grammar Girl Podcast Episode Now.'
This week, we look at double possessives, such as "a friend of Mignon's" and whether they are grammatically correct.
Then, we look at words that do double duty, including "scuttlebutt" and "beetle."
Watch: https://youtu.be/V--ySsNyMaU
Listen […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
I love learning about new words! And Fiona McPherson of the Oxford English Dictionary had all kinds of delightful information about new words and words from World English in our recent conversation. Here she explains what "Rolex" has to do with eggs.
Check out the […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
The image shows a cartoon girl wearing glasses and a green sweater standing in front of an orange background with the words "New podcast episode #1105," "Pronoun Psychology" and a picture of a brain.
This week, we look at how the pronouns you use can reveal your psychological state — for example, how using "I" versus "we" can signal how you are coping with a breakup or a tragic event.
Then, we look at where our alphabet started, from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
My new favorite word is "ruelle," and I learned it from Martha Barnette, author of the fabulous new book "Friends with Words."
Check out our interview in the Grammar Girl podcast to learn more words you can drop into conversations to delight your friends!
Watch […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
Ritalin was named after a woman named Rita (no joke!).
I learned this from Martha Barnette in the latest Grammar Girl podcast about her new book "Friends with Words." :)
Check it out!
Watch: https://youtu.be/F0jQwgW2nnw
Read […]
[Original post on zirk.us]
