Word Matters

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, Ammon Shea, and Peter Sokolowski.

Produced in collaboration with New England Public Media.

Transcript available here.

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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 collaboration with New England Public Media.

Transcript here.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 least.

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 Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 is a delight.

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 Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 available here.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 with New England Public Media.

Transcript available here.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 with New England Public Media.

Transcript available here.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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 Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.