YouTube video by Ben Yagoda

When it came to using--and inventing--lingo, his nibs was swell.

A surprisingly thorny grammatical question.

I knew a tipping point of sorts had been reached last week, when I was at the gym of the small liberal arts college in my town. (I have gym privileges because my wife works at the college.) Two und…

The funnest etymologies, alas, are almost always wrong.

Does the word rhyme with "myopic" or ... "Why, oh, Nick"?

Profs and Pints DC presents: “How to Speak British,” a crash course on bantering, yammering, waffling and otherwise carrying on like someone across the pond, with Ben Yagoda, professor of English at t...

Podcast Episode · The Lives They're Living · 04/03/2025 · 27m

Podcast Episode · The Lives They're Living · 02/12/2025 · 42m

Podcast Episode · The Lives They're Living · 01/30/2025 · 42m

Back to H.L. Mencken and his The American Language. In a supplemental volume published in 1945, he writes: The English opposite number, signifying a person in corresponding office or position, e.g.…

The ever-observant Jan Freeman sends along a quote from (Syracuse-born) Daniel Dezner in a Washington Post essay: “When [people associated with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy] tr…

Podcast Episode · The Lives They're Living · 12/18/2024 · 30m

Confused about whether a newly popular word has made its way from the U.K.? Join the queue.

The evolution of the University’s colloquial shorthand term.