AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: With Valentine's Day coming up this Sunday, we have a subject to set the mood. It's an interview we did a few years ago with the author of The Joy of Text. RS: Kristina Grish base...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We continue our conversation with Rutgers University English professor Jack Lynch. RS: His latest book is The Lexicographer's Dilemma. In it he challenges the idea of treating dic...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Our guest is English professor Jack Lynch, author of the new book The Lexicographer's Dilemma. RS: Why did you write this book? JACK LYNCH: Well, because I have a number of guides...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: We're back with Ben Zimmer from the American Dialect Society. RS: We talked last week about the society's choice for 2009's Word of the Year -- the Twitter-inspired Tweet -- and W...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: some words to help us remember 2009. RS: The American Dialect Society, a small scholarly group, just chose its Word of the Year as well as a Word of the Decade. Wordsmith Ben Zimm...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: English teacher Lida Baker suggests five resolutions for people who want to improve their English in the New Year. LIDA BAKER: My first resolution that I would recommend people ma...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on Wordmaster: palindromes aplenty! RS: A palindrome is something that reads the same backwards or forwards. Palindromes make us think of Janus, the Roman god with one face looking forward, anot...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: A listener, Akbar Gandi in Iran, is asking for an explanation of countable and uncountable nouns and the difference between a name and a noun. RS: English teacher Lida Baker has t...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: Our theme is food, or more precisely, slang having to do with food. So we're dusting off a vintage WORDMASTER: a segment we did with our old friend, David Burke, better known as S...
AA: I'm Avi Arditti with Rosanne Skirble, and this week on WORDMASTER: how the words that couples use when they fight could affect their health. RS: In a new study, forty-two married couples made two overnight visits to a laboratory to discuss their...