You're Saying It Wrong

We continue on with our discussion of trademarks by looking at words that were once trademarked, but have become so widely used that they've actually lost that trademark. Also, Kathy sings! And Ross explains why he never sings.

Hey, can we trademark this? No, I mean, can we trademark the word, "this"? We may not be lawyers, but that's never stopped us from having opinions, especially when it comes to trademarking every word under the sun. I'm sure we can trademark "digression" though, we've cornered the market on that one...

Which came first, the chicken or the chickening out? The egg or the egging on? The noun or the verb? Today we're looking at verbing nouns and nouning verbs, and maybe even a little adjectiving while we're at it. Trust us, this episode is NOT cringe!

Have you ever wondered who Jimi Hendrix was talking about when he sang, "'Scuse me, while I kiss this guy"? We don't know! Because that's not what he said. Today we look at mondegreens, those times we mishear lyrics or phrases in ways that completely change their meaning.

Horrors! As a result of some unforeseen circumstances, we're without a new episode this week. We're disappointed, too! But this does give us a chance to listen back to one of our favorite episodes (actually two of them, combined), from early 2020, which also contains some information that's very relevant to current global events. We really do apologize, and we'll be back in two weeks with a shiny...

First we take a look at a survey of words that people think make other people sound smart, and then we tackle the most difficult word quiz we've ever had on the show. No, really, this is sorta nuts. Plus, some investing advice you should definitely NOT take.

If I were you, I'd hold on to my hat, because in this week's episode we're going to try to tackle the subjunctive mood! We're doing a lot of this under protest.

Some listener emails prompted Kathy and Ross to take a look at the idea that women are the real drivers of innovation in language.

It's our annual airing of grievances, as we vent about the words we'd like to leave in the rear view mirror as we head into a new year. And fair warning: we get pretty petty!

We wrap up 2021 with a look at the most mispronounced words of the year-- we don't even know what some of these things are, let alone how to say them!

Prompted by some listener emails, we're returning to our bread and butter: words we accidentally use when we mean to use other words. It's confusable time!

Medial cluster what now?? Come on, you know you want to hear this. It's something you're doing basically all the time...

We won't turn a blind eye if you get caught red-handed trying to steal our thunder, because today we're digging into the sometimes surprising, usually murky origins of phrases we use every day (and we want all the credit, darn it!).

After our discussion of plurals in the last episode, we got to thinking about all the trouble apostrophes cause us, and Ross proposes a rather extreme solution.

All sorts of fun with plurals today: what we get wrong when we try to use Latin plurals, the rules of English plurals, pluralizing compound words... Look out, our opinions on plurals are like a charging herd of rhinocerotes!

We continue with our look at the most commonly misspelled words in the English language, as we dig into why it is we tend to spell them incorrectly, and the rules about why we spell them the way we do. And since this is English, we know rules are made to be broken!

Kathy and Ross challenge Fletcher to a spelling bee, as they tackle some of the English language's most commonly misspelled words and Fletcher immediately regrets bragging about how good he is at spelling.

Kathy, Ross & Fletcher dip back into their bag of commonly confused words with some particularly pretentious examples.

We continue with our discussion of contronyms by jumping into some seemingly simple words that turn out to have some complicated meanings. And the summer heat has made us a little loopy, which means we devolve into just a bit of toilet humor (PG-rated, of course), so... be warned!

Do you trim the tree before you trim the tree? Do you have to dust after you dust a cake? Today we're looking at contronyms (or antagonyms, or enantiosemy, or Janus words, or...), those cases where a single word can have two completely opposite meanings.

Kathy, Ross & Fletcher explore a few more redundant words and phrases!

This week, Kathy and Ross bring us a list of what they call "flapdoodle words," words that are redundant and just kind of junk things up. Or do they? Some of them might be kind of useful!

No more limits! All You're Saying It Wrong episodes will be available in one fell swoop!

Today, Kathy and Ross teach Fletcher about "flat adverbs," which look just like their adjective counterparts, but are still... adverbs. Think fast! Drive safe! Who needs that pesky -ly ending? Not these words.

Today we take a big step back and answer a common listener question about exactly why we don't talk that much about "The Rules" of English. Spoiler: THERE AREN'T ANY! (Ok, we're kidding, there are some.)