Did you know George Washington's copy of James Monroe's scathing memoir still exists—complete with Washington's passive-aggressive margin notes? This week, I talked with Mastodon's very own @overholt, who oversees Harvard's Samuel Johnson collection (and more). We covered books that travel […]

It's tax day in the U.S., so let's talk abut the word: "tax" dates to the 1300s, from the Latin "taxāre" — "to charge or valuate." But taxation is way older than the word. In ancient Egypt, governors just walked through your fields and took a portion of your crops. Before money even existed […]

Have you ever heard of a "semordnilap"? It's a word that becomes a different word when reversed — like "stressed" becomes "desserts." Even better, "semordnilap" backwards is "palindromes." This week, we look at autological and heterological words, and why "heterological" itself creates a logic […]

"Please contact Squiggly, Aardvark, or myself." Does that sound right? It's actually wrong! The trick to get it right is to take out the other people. You'd say, "contact me," not "contact myself." Adding names doesn't change it. In this week's podcast, you'll also learn what Irish people mean […]

On my morning walk, I saw a squirrel eating flowers on some ice plant, and he was just SMOOSHING his face into those flowers! Wish I had a photo; it was hilarious.

I wrote a book with 101 tips about misused words, and here’s just one great reason to buy it: it's on sale right now! Find the ebook at Bookshop and Barnes & Noble for only $2.99. These deals don’t last long, so grab your copy while you can! 📕 […] [Original post on zirk.us]

I just noticed the Kindle version of my book THE ULTIMATE WRITING GUIDE FOR STUDENTS is on sale for only $2.99! I updated the book in 2023 too, so it's still quite fresh. Get it while it's cheap. :) […]

All four astronauts are safely out of the capsule!

I've been watching Artemis for about an hour. It was wonderful, amazing, and inspiring; but I feel wrung out. What an intense week.

I LOVE that John Carreyrou's piece claiming to have identified the creator of bitcoin hinges on linguist sleuthing like hyphen usage! https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/business/bitcoin-satoshi-nakamoto-identity-adam-back.html

"Odious" has nothing to do with smell, and "noisome" has nothing to do with noise. Are you surprised? I have more commonly confused "smell" words in today's podcast, including "odorous," "malodorous," and "odoriferous." WATCH: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cu8ydXjUvPc READ […]

Do you think "gray" and "grey" are just American and British spellings? I did — for my whole career. But it turns out color scientists say they can be different colors. This week, I talked with former Merriam-Webster editor Kory Stamper about her new book "True […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Our No Kings event isn't until later this afternoon, so I got to go see some cute goats this morning!

Have you ever groaned at an elaborate pun? It might have been a *feghoot*! The term comes from a 1956 sci-fi series about time-traveling troubleshooter Ferdinand Feghoot, whose adventures always ended in cringey puns. This episode is guaranteed to make you laugh […] [Original post on zirk.us]

In today's show, Peter Sokolowski traces the word "dictionary" back to a 16th-century Latin work by a monk named Calepino. We look at how this original source led to the first monolingual dictionaries in both English and French, all within a year of each other […] [Original post on zirk.us]

An Irish person is less likely to answer "yes" or "no" than you might expect. Instead, they'll answer with something like this: ☘️ Can you swim? I can! ☘️ Do you like tomato juice? I don’t. ☘️ Are you coming? I amn’t. The article explains why. Happy St. Patrick's […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Leprechauns may have started as Roman priests running naked through the streets. Yes, really. Most of us picture a tiny guy in green with a pot of gold, but in older Irish tradition, leprechauns wore red and lived under water. The word itself has changed so much […] [Original post on zirk.us]

How do you pronounce "Celtic"? If you're a basketball fan, you probably say "Seltic." If you study history or linguistics, you probably say "Keltic." So who's right? Both pronunciations are in the dictionary, but they have different histories. The original Greek […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Have you ever seen people use "Academy Awards" as though it were singular? Jim Norrena did and wondered whether it's always wrong. Hear what he found in today's Grammar Girl podcast! WATCH: https://youtu.be/ZM9oS-hAtjg READ […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Should you write "don't" or "do not"? It depends. Contractions are the default in everyday writing such as emails, dialogue, and conversational prose. But they're almost always absent in scholarly papers, legal writing, formal business documents, and (surprisingly) […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Think a "bully pulpit" is about bullying an audience? Think again. The phrase actually goes back to Theodore Roosevelt, who used "bully" to mean excellent or first-rate. It's the same idea as in the phrase "Bully for you!" When Roosevelt called the presidency a […] [Original post on zirk.us]

The word “tattoo” has two distinct meanings, with two distinct etymologies. The first, meaning skin art, comes from Polynesian. The second, meaning a military drumbeat, comes from the Dutch.

AP style is all lowercase and "saving" (singular). Don't forget to move your clocks an hour forward before you go to bed tonight. In the U.S., daylight saving time officially starts at 2:00 a.m. on the second Sunday in March.

Some people call these the same thing, and other people have different names for them — and it can depend on where you live! That's just one of the cool things you'll learn this week from my chat with Joan Houston Hall, former editor of the Dictionary of American […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Happy National Grammar Day! In case you missed it, I made my LinkedIn Learning writing course free for 24 hours. How are you going to celebrate? Link and details in the first comment. #grammarday

Calling all poets and word lovers! Don't miss your chance to enter the ACES #NationalGrammarDay poetry contest. The deadline is tomorrow (March 2, noon Eastern)! The winner gets their poem featured on the Grammar Girl podcast, a signed copy of my book "The Grammar […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Teens aren't destroying language. They're playing with it! I talked with Sali Tagliamonte, a "language detective" who's studied teen talk for years. She busts myths about texting, explains why "like" dominates, why "very" is back, and shares her linguistic […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Did you know people were using capital letters to shout in print as far back as 1856? This week, I talked with Mastodon's very own technology historian, @glennf, who traced the history of "shouty caps" through centuries of newspapers, old Usenet posts, and even […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Are you ever confused about "awhile" versus "a while"? Here's how I remember the difference: "A while" (two words) is a noun phrase, so test whether you can use a different noun: ✅ It's been A WHILE = It's been A YEAR "Awhile" (one word) is an adverb, so test […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Do media moguls have anything to do with ski moguls? Nope, at least not etymologically! SKI BUMPS: From German/Norwegian for "mound." Skiers create them as they carve turns. POWERFUL PEOPLE: From "the Great Mogul" rulers of the Mughal Empire (1526). It eventually […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Did you know ChatGPT's earlier versions barely used em dashes at all? This week, I talked with Sean Goedecke, a software engineer who's looked at *why* AI models went em-dash wild. The shift may have happened when companies started digitizing public domain books […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Listeners recently told me about an important "dozens" phrase: "the dozens," an African American game where two people trade increasingly inventive insults, usually in front of an audience. The origin of "the dozens" is surprisingly hard to find. There's the slave […] [Original post on zirk.us]

THE SLOPPER BOWL! What wonderful wordplay. I wish this would have come out a day sooner because I was on WOSU just yesterday talking about the word "slop" and how one thing that makes it special is the way people play with it to make other words like "slopaganda." […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Ever confidently use a word your whole life, only to discover you might be wrong — or that half the people don't believe you? F-O-R-T-E is TWO different words! One from French (your strong point), one from Italian (loud in music). But Americans mixed up the […] [Original post on zirk.us]

I'm going to be on All Sides with AmyJuravich on WOSU in Ohio tomorrow morning at 11:00 a.m. Eastern talking about familects, misheard song lyrics, and eggcorns like "windshield factor" for "windchill factor." Get your story ready and call in! https://www.wosu.org/show/all-sides 614-292-8513

I'm ASTONISHED by how many people are saying they write and ellipsis with no space on the left and a space on the right! I feel like I've never seen it before the last 6 months, but clearly, I'm mistaken. I will definitely defend your right to have a "house style," […] [Original post on zirk.us]

What's with people writing ellipses like this lately... with a space on only one side? I suspect it's an AI thing because I've never seen it before, and suddenly, it's everywhere — so much so that I doubted myself and just checked AP & Chicago. But nope, they still do a space on both sides.

Did you know there's an Inuktitut word for "noisy walking on hard snow"? And a Yup'ik word for "powdery snow that enters through cracks in a house"? This week, I talked with Dr. Charles Kemp about using big data to answer the big question "Do the Inuit really have […] [Original post on zirk.us]

You may not have noticed, but "scarecrow" is a grammatical outlaw — it describes what the object does, not what it is. Linguists call these "exocentric compounds." "Pickpocket" isn't a pocket. "Cutthroat" isn't a throat. And these words have a surprisingly dark […] [Original post on zirk.us]

I needed some books this morning, so I bought them from Moon Palace Books in Minneapolis. You could too! Just pick them as your bookstore at https://bookshop.org or buy directly from their website: https://moonpalacebooks.com/

The plurals of words that end in "o" are weird. Why is it "tomatoes" but "photos"? "Potatoes" but "pianos"? I always thought there must be a rule, but there are SO MANY exceptions! The guideline is to add "-es" after a consonant + "o" and "-s" after a vowel + "o." […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Have you ever wondered why "baker's dozen" means 13 instead of 12? It's not because bakers are generous — it comes from medieval bakers trying to avoid punishment! Bakers who sold underweight bread could face fines, flogging, and even the pillory. There's also a […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Why does grave mean both “serious” and “a hole in the ground”? Is news really just “new things”? And can AI be trusted with word history? Today, I talk with Doug Harper from one of my favorite resources — Etymonline — about word origins and how he built the site […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Is "impact" really a bad verb? And why did "empathy" quietly edge out "sympathy," except when someone dies? In this week’s Grammar Girl, I dig into the history, the data, and the emotional nuance behind these two everyday language debates. WATCH […] [Original post on zirk.us]

I know there's a lot going on, but if you need a mental health break, this morning I have an interview with one of my favorite Mastodonians: In addition to posting delightful items here, @overholt curates the Samuel Johnson collection at Harvard's Houghton library […] [Original post on zirk.us]

If you're traveling this weekend, download this interview with @bgzimmer to listen to on your trip! He has DELIGHTFUL stories about: — The origin of "hella" — Run DMC and "drop" — 1960s slang from cots in military barracks — Stephen Colbert & "truthiness" I promise […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Well, this was an exciting thing to wake up to! I'm on a list of the best podcasts from women over 50 — alongside amazing women like Amy Poehler, Katie Couric, Michelle Obama, Kara Swisher, Gretchen Rubin, Mel Robbins, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and more! I'm also […] [Original post on zirk.us]

It's word-of-the-year season! This week, I got together with Jess Zafarris and Danny Hieber to talk about all the 2025 picks. Some favorites: — Six seven (Danny made a spirited defense.) — Rage bait (Will knowing the term helps people recognize it and calm down?) — […] [Original post on zirk.us]

Grammarpaloozians on Patreon and Subtext: Don't miss today's mini-crossword that goes with yesterday's podcast! To join and get crosswords, ad-free podcasts, and fun tidbits, use these links for one month free at Patreon: — Order of the Aardvark ($5/month level) […] [Original post on zirk.us]