Merriam-Webster
Word Matters
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Merriam-Webster
Word MattersEpisodes
Merriam-Webster
Word Matters
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It’s our 100th episode, which seemed like a good occasion to answer a listener question of a more personal type: how did we—that is, we three editors—get here?Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration
A listener questions a tautology in one of our definitions and starts us off on a discussion of all types of repetition and redundancy.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public
Writing advice often includes hackneyed phrases we’re supposed to avoid. The phrases we're warned against today are different from the ones of yesteryear. We'll explore both.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in
Whether you're hoping to improve your high school French or just order that croissant with more confidence, we have some tips for you.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public M
A discussion of various kinds of slips of the tongue and errors of the ear.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript available here.See Privacy Policy at https:
In the disconcerting event that your travels by air deliver you, but not what you've packed, to your destination, you may find yourself filing a lost luggage claim, or a lost baggage claim—it could be either. Instead of ruminating over the awfu
Sometimes a word, over time, will take on a meaning that doesn’t play very nicely with its original meaning, leaving a person who knows both meanings unsure what to do. Is the word still usable? Or is it … skunked? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Amm
We’ve discussed how words come to be entered in our dictionaries before, but today we’re going to talk about removing words from dictionaries. Which words get dropped? And why? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced
Some listeners want to know if working with words professionally makes a dictionary editor better, or worse, at Wordle, and another listener wants us to weigh in on the difference between 'nauseated' and 'nauseous'—which doesn’t turn our stomac
The earliest dictionaries were the fruit of one person’s labor, but the 1864 Webster's Unabridged changed all of that.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript
Jacques Bailly has been the official pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee since 2003—23 years after winning the bee himself. A professor in the Classics department at the University of Vermont, his language expertise is vast, and talkin
An exploration of Thomas Nashe's use of animals as metaphors for those who imbibe heavily; And what *is* the plural of octopus?Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Tr
An exploration of spellings—like 'ect.' for 'etc.'—that reflect alternative pronunciations, and the unexplainable favoritism that is shown to 'inexplicable.'Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration wi
A visit to the mailbag provides us with a sartorial use of ‘hipster,’ some schooling on 19th century locomotive technology, and a question about sneaking words into dictionaries.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produce
We all know how to find opposites by removing prefixes: 'unhappy' becomes 'happy'; 'disagree' becomes 'agree.' Easy peasy. But some words resist prefix removal—or, at least they try. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Pr
George Orwell published his famous essay "Politics and the English Language" in 1946, and we mostly wish he hadn't.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript ava
English borrowed lots of words from French. And it liked some of those words so much it borrowed them twice. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript available
If brevity is the soul of wit, are abbreviations the language's best jokes?Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.Transcript available here.See Privacy Policy at https:
Whistleblowers didn't always tell secrets and hipsters weren't always hip. This episode explains how 'whistleblower' and 'hipster' came to have their current meanings.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced in collab
First, we'll look at how 'at large' came to be applied to editors, criminals, and sometimes the world itself. Then, we'll trace the word 'large' itself. It's kind of a big deal.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Produced
This week's episode is all about the small details that make up the dictionary. How do we decide the guide words that appear at the tops of pages? What are those dots that break up a headword at a dictionary entry? (Hint: they have nothing to d
The ending of a word can tell you a lot. Just the slight difference between '-ity' and '-ness' can create a wide variety of distinctions and nuance. Today we're starting at the end.Plus, everything you'll ever need to know about the history of
Most of the time, there's nothing about an adjective that makes it refer only to any gender. And yet, there are some words that get subconsciously used by English speakers in very specific ways. Let's take a look at some of the surprising habit
In English, there's a certain way adjectives tend to fall in line. It's natural to hear something like "brown leather wallet," but "leather brown wallet" would sound slightly off. So... why? We'll look into it.Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Sh
We all know that nouns have a specific job. So do verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and the like. But what happens when they start moonlighting in other roles? Meet the attributive noun. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.Prod
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