You're Saying It Wrong

Kathy and Ross pull out all the stops to try to trick Fletcher with a new spelling quiz. Fletcher does his best to upset them.

Kathy, Ross, and Fletcher try to tackle the Welsh language, with... questionable results. Look, we're all doing our best here.

Think you don't know what phonotactics are? Even our youngest English speakers do! You might just not realize it...

This week, Kathy and Ross challenge Fletcher to an epic eponym quiz, and somehow they detour again into an analysis of pavement. How? You'll have to listen to find out!

The plural of thief is thieves, so why isn't the plural of chief chieves? And as the old woman once said, where are the beeves??? On today's show, we tackle the tricky nuance of plurals and synonyms that aren't actually synonyms.

We'll be happy to tell you what this episode is about just as soon as we get back from using the bathroom—I mean, the restroom—I mean, the washroom—I mean, the facilities—I mean…

Today we address a couple of listener questions, including one about the Third Conditional (???), before moving on to a quiz about Middle English vs. Latin spellings.

Today we have a wide-ranging discussion about the words we use, when we use them, and the enormous power they can have.

Sometimes words get a whole lot less specific over time, and sometimes people get really mad about that!

We look at how a tiny little prefix or suffix can completely change the meaning of a word. Or how it could do nothing at all!

We finish our discussion of the words people would like to see banned from the English language in 2026 and then we uncover some uncommonly odd things about one particular prefix.

We go through a list of words people want to banish in 2026 and then take a swing over to the weird world of contractions. You ain't heard nothin' yet!

We explore all sorts of love and love-related words as we honor St. Valentine (and some other unexpected saints).

We look at how much a word can change if we just give it a little nudge this way or that, which leads us into a discussion of how certain Arabic words made their way into English.

We look at the top 10 most commonly misspelled words. Watch those double letters!

It's been a strange winter so far, so let's talk about some strange winter words! Brrrrrrrrrr!!!

We indulge in one of our favorite pastimes: quibbling over tiny differences in the way people say things. What fun!

We all like to feel a bit fancy from time to time, but when we turn to French, it can get us in trouble.

We continue our annual tradition of looking back at the words that defined the year, as chosen by dictionaries, listeners... and us!

As we reach the end of the year, we get some grab-bag whiplash with English questions and conundrums from all over the language spectrum.

This week, we look at some words that have come unstuck in time.

What could be more fun for the holidays than digging into the bizarre world of Latin and Greek plurals? Nothing! That's what! (This episode originally aired on 12/14/24.)

We extend our quiz about abbreviated words into a second episode, and Kathy learns that people don't always do things just to look fancy (a lot of the time they do, though!).

We answer a few listener questions, including one about a changing pronunciation that drives one person nuts, and another about abbreviations that leads us to some surprising (and confusing) places.

In celebration of Thanksgiving and all the food that comes with it, we’ll take an etymological trip around the dinner plate.