The Bush administration's proposed $700 billion bailout of the financial industry is the talk of Washington right now. But where exactly did the term bailout come from? In this special edition of Wordmaster, Avi Arditti and Rosanne Skirble turn to di...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: dictionary editor Ben Zimmer explains terms from the U.S. presidential campaign. RS: We start with battleground state and swing state.BEN ZIMMER: Well, they're usually used pretty...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: we continue our discussion with dictionary editor Ben Zimmer about terms related to the presidential campaign. RS: One word that's being associated with John McCain -- or John McC...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: prepositions for the perplexed. RS: The other day, our colleague Julie Taboh told us about a friend of hers, a non-native English speaker. It seems he once tried to tell someone t...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti, and this week on WORDMASTER: an update on an Iranian listener. Rosanne Skirble and I spoke to her by phone early in 2005. RS: Well, what do you like about studying English? What is it, is it a ... ATEFEH: Oh, no, actually I love...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: a collection of life stories told in just six words. RS: But first, we have a report on a linguist in Virginia who collects accents from across America, and across the world, and...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: with Major League Baseball's championship series delayed by rain -- no World Series game has ever been suspended before -- we thought we'd step up to the plate and reprise a segme...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: The election of 2008, in the words of 1828, the year Noah Webster published his epic American Dictionary of the English Language. We wanted to know how the man known as the foundi...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: more from our interview with Arthur Schulman. He's compiled a book of words and definitions set forth by Noah Webster in his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. RS:...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti. Rosanne Skirble is away. This week on WORDMASTER, on the phone from Southern California, is English teacher Nina Weinstein. She teaches business English, among other things, and I was curious how she and her students are addressi...
