The rule about when to use "between" and when to use "among" seems straightforward, until you look more closely. Then it's not straightforward at all. Our listener Lowell Boileau wanted to know what we think about this rule: "My understanding is that 'between' is for 'between two parties' and 'among' is for 'among three or more parties.' Yet I hear and read 'between' frequently used in reference to three or more." Many of us grew up with this exact same rule, but Lowell is right. Not everyone

When we describe someone as “obtuse,” there are clear negative connotations. The scope of those connotations has been expanding, perhaps because of the word “abstruse.” “Abstruse” came on our radar recently when Professor Anne Curzan received an email with this subject line: “I thought this word was a joke: abstruse.”

On this week's That's What They Say, English Professor Anne Curzan fills us in on the American Dialect Society's annual "Word of the Year" vote. The fact that this year's selection was the first ever to be held virtually should give you a big clue about the winner.

If someone tells you to leave your keys on the dash, you probably know right where to leave them -- on top of the panel in your car that displays controls and information, i.e. the dashboard. A listener recently pointed out to us that the "board" part of this compound sort of makes sense, but what's going on with "dash"? It's tempting to assume it has something to do with speed, but that's not the case.

You’re probably familiar with the phrase “batten down the hatches,” especially if you’ve ever turned on the Weather Channel before a major storm. A colleague of Professor Anne Curzan recently asked us though, can “batten” pair with anything else? Good question.

Last week on That's What They Say , we talked about a peeve over "exasperate" getting used in place of "exacerbate." This week, we looked at two more words that often get entangled, "trammel" and "trample." Professor Anne Curzan ran across "trammel" while researching last week's show. While we're very familiar with things like "untrammeled access" or "untrammeled nature," "trammel" on its own raised a flag.

The words "exacerbate" and "exasperate" look and sound very similar. That could explain why people sometimes say "exasperate" when they mean "exacerbate," as our listner Judy Nikolai has noticed. "Once or twice I've even heard reporters or interviewees on NPR employ what I believe is this incorrect usage," she says.

Some words sound similar but don't have anything to do with each other. Others sound similar and have everything to do with each other. When a listener asked us about "ornery," we had no idea that it fell into the latter category, alongside "ordinary." They do sound similar, but how are they related?

In the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, we found ourselves wondering about the history of “aftermath.” A listener named Sybil Kolon put "aftermath" on our radar a couple of weeks ago. This past week, we noticed people from all over the political spectrum using it in discussions of a post-election world.

Our clocks fell back by an hour Sunday morning. As they did, a much-discussed usage issue once again raised its head. Though most of us would agree the extra hour of sleep is nice, there’s contention over what we call this particular event.