You're Saying It Wrong

Today, we look at language rules that are rules sometimes, and rules that don't make sense. Well, they make some sense. Whatever. They're rules, anyway.

With the world's greatest sporting event upon us, we look at the origins of some sports-related words.

A listener question prompts us to think about words like rehabilitate, revamp, and nonplussed, and whether we can be plussed about habilitating and vamping, or if we're just talking nonsense.

This week, we're talking ambiguous words and ambiguous phrases– sometimes we think we know what we're saying and sometimes we're really wrong.

Latin may be dead, but we still use it every day. This week we look at some common Latin phrases and what they actually mean.

We know what a berry is, we know what a cranberry is, but what the heck is a "cran?" We enter the sometimes murky world of the cranberry morpheme...

As we head into summer, we'll take a look back to see if we can remember what we've learned over the past year.

After this year's thrilling spell-off in the National Spelling Bee, we try to tease out the definitions of some of the words that won the contest.

This week, we're talking about some of the very oldest words in the English language, and how little some of them have changed over thousands of years.

We're looking at words that were made by smooshing together other words, but it all happened so long ago that we completely forgot about it.

We're dipping back into common rhetorical devices today, and talking about how they can be used to win people to your side... or at least make them laugh a little bit.

We look at some very old words that used to mean something, but that we now only see in very specific instances.

Some of us (Fletcher) can never keep straight what, exactly, the subjunctive is, so fortunately Kathy and Ross are here to remind us!

We have fun with rhetoric and some commonly used rhetorical devices, including how we might be using them even when we don't realize it.

We look at some names of famous people that, when you pronounce them correctly, can let people know you're an expert... or a snob.

This week, Kathy and Ross quiz Fletcher on a list of words that may or may not have been coined by Shakespeare. You might be surprised by which ones we still use today.

We look at why Americans love to talk like our friends from across the pond— or like to think that's what we're doing.

Today we're looking at sentence stress and how the meaning of a sentence can completely change depending on which words you emphasize.

Ouch! Unfortunately, we won't have an episode this week, because even more unfortunately, one of us had an accident and sustained a not-insignificant personal injury. Everything's basically ok, but, you know, it hurts, so we need a week off. Sorry about that, and we'll see you next week!

We get back to one of our favorite topics: Words that sound a lot like other words but have totally different meanings.

We look at some words that we think are related to other words, but actually aren't. Except sometimes they are.

We look at some "rules" of the language that were mostly just made up so people could feel like they were speaking proper English.

We run through some particularly confusing grammar mistakes and how sometimes we might think we’re saying one thing when we’re really saying another.

We run through a few of the many, many English words that contain silent letters and some of the baffling reasons we pronounce those words the way we do.

We dig into why certain words are spelled ridiculously thanks to a bunch of scholars a few hundred years ago who got a little too nutso about making everything look Latin.