Word Matters

By Merriam-Webster, New England Public Media

Arts Education

What's Word Matters about?

Word Matters is a show for readers, writers, and anyone who's curious about the English language. Join Merriam-Webster editors as they challenge supposed grammar rules, reveal the surprising origins behind words, tackle common questions, and generally geek out about the beautiful nightmare that is our language.

Download our free app to listen on your phone

LAST EPISODE

Episode 100: How did we get...

08.03.2022

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 ...

Word Matters episodes:

08.03.2022 Episode 100: How did we get here? 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 ...
07.27.2022 Do we repeat ourselves? Very well then, we repeat ourselves. 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 ...
07.20.2022 Hackneyed Phrases, Both Old and New 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 collaboration with New ...
07.13.2022 Tips for Frenchifying Your French 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 Media. ...
07.06.2022 Eggcorns, Mondegreens, and Spoonerisms—Oh My! 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://art19.com/privacy ...
06.29.2022 Traveling Words: Luggage, Baggage, and the Recombobulation Station 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 ...
06.22.2022 Skunked Words 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? ...
06.15.2022 When Dictionaries Drop Words 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 in ...
06.08.2022 Wordle Does Not Make Us Nauseous 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 stomachs in the ...
06.01.2022 The Invention of the Modern Dictionary 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 available here. See ...
05.25.2022 An Interview with Jacques Bailly, Official Pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee 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 talking to him ...
05.18.2022 Nashe's 8 Types of Drunkards Includes No Octopi 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. Transcript ...
05.11.2022 Will 'ect.' become an acceptable spelling of 'etc.'? And if it does, will that be unexplainable or merely inexplicable? 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 with New England Public Media. Transcript available here. See ...
05.04.2022 Corrections, Clarifications, and Grave Transgressions 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. Produced in collaboration ...
04.27.2022 Uncommon Opposites 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. Produced in collaboration ...
04.20.2022 George Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language' 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 available here. See ...
04.13.2022 Linguistic Double Dipping 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 here. ...
04.06.2022 All About Abbreviations 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://art19.com/privacy and California ...
03.30.2022 The History of 'Whistleblower' 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 collaboration with New England Public Media. ...
03.23.2022 What does it mean to be 'at large'? 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 ...
03.16.2022 Dictionary Arcana 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 ...
03.09.2022 A Pair of Suffixes and The History of 'Ditto' 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 ...
03.02.2022 On Secretly Gendered Language 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 ...
02.23.2022 How to Order Adjectives 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 ...
02.16.2022 When Nouns Act Like Adjectives 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. ...
02.09.2022 Dipping Into the Mailbag: 'Yeet,' 'Typeface' vs. 'Font,' and 'Lo and Behold' We're back to the mailbag this week with some excellent questions, including: Is 'yeet' ready for the dictionary? What's the difference between a typeface and a font? Why do people say 'lo and behold'? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, ...
02.02.2022 The History of the English Language (The Podcast) English is often called a "Germanic" language, and yet huge parts of it come from Latin and Greek. So: what gives? Here's the story of English, in 17 minutes. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in ...
01.26.2022 Words That Began as Metaphors Usually, a word begins with a literal, concrete meaning. (Like concrete, for example.) Then, eventually, it starts being used metaphorically. (Hey again, concrete!) But with these words, that's not the case. These words began as metaphors and then went backwards. ...
01.19.2022 Inside Our Citation Files 16,000,000 citations can't be wrong
01.12.2022 Getting Philosophical About the Dictionary Should we only enter words everyone knows, or does the dictionary need to cover the obscure as well? The answer is, well, pretty philosophical. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public ...
01.05.2022 The Newest Words in the Dictionary We recently added a whole bunch of new words. Here are some of our favorites! Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media. Transcript available here. Our podcast is sponsored by ...
12.15.2021 The Year in Words 2021 Last week we told you about our Word of the Year. This week, we'll get into the rest of the words that made up 2021. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England ...
12.08.2021 Our Word of the Year 2021 The word 'vaccine' was about much more than just medicine this year. Here's what we looked at to make it our 2021 Word of the Year. Read up on 'vaccine' and the rest of the runners up here. Hosted by ...
12.01.2021 Researching Slang (with Ben Zimmer) This week we're joined by Wall Street Journal language columnist and Spectacular Vernacular podcast host Ben Zimmer! Learn all about Ben's research on the history of words like 'hella' and 'Ms.', plus how slang is studied and tracked through time. ...
11.24.2021 Why Is There No 'N' in 'Restaurateur'? First: someone who owns or runs a restaurant is called a restaurateur. What? How did that happen? Is 'restauranteur' a valid word? We'll get into it. Then: why do people say 'meteoric rise' when meteors are famously things that fall? ...
11.17.2021 'Decimate': Use It However You Want Few words in the English language get people as riled up as the supposed "incorrect" use of 'decimate.' Does it have to keep its Roman meaning of "reduce by one tenth" or can it generally mean "destroy," as it's been ...
11.10.2021 What It Means to 'Call an Audible' A word for making plans on the fly.
11.03.2021 'Sneaked' vs. 'Snuck' All about verbs that are... slightly off.
10.27.2021 The Etymology of Insults Our first PG-13 episode!
10.20.2021 How Words Are Dropped from the Dictionary We talk all the time about how words are entered. But what about the ones that fall away? How are those decisions made? Let's get into it. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with ...
10.13.2021 Words Named After Real People All about eponyms
10.06.2021 Taking an Ax—or Axe?—to the 'Podium' vs. 'Lectern' Debate Today we're looking at two of the English language's most persistent questions. First, is there an actual difference between 'ax' and 'axe'? What's up with that? Then, the great debate continues to rage over what can be called a 'podium' ...
09.29.2021 What's a folk etymology? The English language 1) is not logical, and 2) loves to hold onto its mistakes. Enter folk etymology, or, attempts to apply logic to the language, and the mistakes that took root. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter ...
09.22.2021 'Possum' or 'Opossum'? This week we finally address it: the two spellings of everyone's favorite North American marsupial. Plus, we do a deep dive on 'staycation' and various other leisure-related portmanteaus! Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration ...
09.15.2021 How We Approach Compound Words We're back to the mailbag this week with two great user questions: What makes a compound word worthy of dictionary entry? Is there one correct way to spell 'yay'? Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in ...
09.08.2021 How Language Evolves (with Grammar Girl) We're joined this week by Mignon Fogarty, aka Grammar Girl, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of her show Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing. Hosted by Emily Brewster, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New England ...
08.18.2021 The Brothers Merriam: An Introduction The History of Merriam-Webster, Part Two.
08.11.2021 Who was this Webster guy, anyway? The History of Merriam-Webster, Part One.
08.04.2021 All About Subject-Verb Agreement Most of the time, the subject of a sentence and its verb get along just fine. But when they don't, they can be just a tiny bit... wildly confusing. We'll try to clear up the trickiest subject-verb situations for you. ...
07.28.2021 The Invention of 'Introvert' (with Science Diction) We're joined this week by Johanna Mayer and Chris Egusa from the Science Diction podcast to discuss the psychological origins of the word 'introvert'! Hosted by Emily Brewster, Neil Serven, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski. Produced in collaboration with New ...

Older episodes

Word Matters

What's Word Matters about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

Word Matters episodes:

Episode 100: How did we get here?

Do we repeat ourselves? Very well then, we repeat ourselves.

Hackneyed Phrases, Both Old and New

Tips for Frenchifying Your French

Eggcorns, Mondegreens, and Spoonerisms—Oh My!

Traveling Words: Luggage, Baggage, and the Recombobulation Station

Skunked Words

When Dictionaries Drop Words

Wordle Does Not Make Us Nauseous

The Invention of the Modern Dictionary

An Interview with Jacques Bailly, Official Pronouncer for Scripps National Spelling Bee

Nashe's 8 Types of Drunkards Includes No Octopi

Will 'ect.' become an acceptable spelling of 'etc.'? And if it does, will that be unexplainable or merely inexplicable?

Corrections, Clarifications, and Grave Transgressions

Uncommon Opposites

George Orwell's 'Politics and the English Language'

Linguistic Double Dipping

All About Abbreviations

The History of 'Whistleblower'

What does it mean to be 'at large'?

Dictionary Arcana

A Pair of Suffixes and The History of 'Ditto'

On Secretly Gendered Language

How to Order Adjectives

When Nouns Act Like Adjectives

Dipping Into the Mailbag: 'Yeet,' 'Typeface' vs. 'Font,' and 'Lo and Behold'

The History of the English Language (The Podcast)

Words That Began as Metaphors

Inside Our Citation Files

Getting Philosophical About the Dictionary

The Newest Words in the Dictionary

The Year in Words 2021

Our Word of the Year 2021

Researching Slang (with Ben Zimmer)

Why Is There No 'N' in 'Restaurateur'?

'Decimate': Use It However You Want

What It Means to 'Call an Audible'

'Sneaked' vs. 'Snuck'

The Etymology of Insults

How Words Are Dropped from the Dictionary

Words Named After Real People

Taking an Ax—or Axe?—to the 'Podium' vs. 'Lectern' Debate

What's a folk etymology?

'Possum' or 'Opossum'?

How We Approach Compound Words

How Language Evolves (with Grammar Girl)

The Brothers Merriam: An Introduction

Who was this Webster guy, anyway?

All About Subject-Verb Agreement

The Invention of 'Introvert' (with Science Diction)